To Live A Little3 - Through Winter
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: The prequel to To Live A Little and All The Way Home. Illya is blinded during a mission in Stockholm. His world has become completely changed, and he is forced to adapt to a new way of living. But Napoleon is there to help him through. (Slash)
1. Chapter 1

Late afternoon, deep winter, too far north for long days. The sky was already inky, but the lights of the city shimmered on the surface of the black water and pooled on banks of snow, on scraped streets, glinted on the black arms of leafless trees. Stockholm was quite beautiful in winter, despite the bitter cold. The air was frozen in Illya's lungs each time he breathed in.

He turned his back on all of that and bent to the basic Yale lock that held the door closed. This building was only a few stories high, only a dozen years old, a world away from the beautiful architecture closer to the centre of the city.

'Simple enough,' he murmured, and he pressed a little strip into the tiny keyhole and pulled his sleeve up to reveal his watch. He and Napoleon both turned away and closed their eyes as he pressed the detonator. Blinding white light flared into the darkness. If he had looked, and if it were dark inside, he wouldn't be able to see a thing when the glare faded.

'The whole thing should be simple,' Napoleon murmured beside him as Illya touched the door experimentally. It was swinging loose. 'Get in, neutralise opposition, get the papers, get out.'

Illya huffed an almost silent laugh, and got out his gun.

'Is it ever?'

Napoleon patted him on the back. 'Come on, Raffles. Let's get in.'

Illya slipped through first, feeling Napoleon following. The space behind the door was dark, but there was light further on. They slipped silently across the room and opened the door onto a corridor that was so brightly lit it was momentarily dazzling. He and Napoleon pushed into the space simultaneously, Illya covering the left, Napoleon the right. Silenced shots sputted through the air and on either side of them men fell.

'See. Simple,' Napoleon said rather smugly, and Illya snorted.

'Two down – how many to go?'

He took aim at another figure that had appeared around the corner, and dropped the man before he could even raise his gun.

'Remind me to spend more time in the firing range,' Napoleon said, eyeing Illya appreciatively. 'Okay, let's clear out this level, then check upstairs. I think the labs are on the second floor.'

They circled around the ground floor, taking out anyone they saw, dropping them with the same tranquilliser bullets they had used on the first few.

'Like a modern rendition of sleeping beauty,' Illya said musingly as he looked down on the blank face of the latest man he had dropped.

'All right, IK,' Napoleon nodded, patting him on the arm. 'I think that's it down here. Let's try upstairs.'

They backtracked to the stairs. It was a modern building and the stairs had open backs and scant railings, which allowed the U.N.C.L.E. men a good view of anyone who might suddenly appear at the bottom, but conversely meant anyone appearing could get off a shot through a gap. It made Illya nervous.

'That's a lab,' he said at the top of the stairs, nodding towards a plain panel door with a narrow rectangular window set in the top half. He could smell the telltale scents of a lab even without looking through the window. 'Probably good stuff in there. Notes.'

'Yeah,' Napoleon murmured. They got close enough to the door to see a little through the window. 'Two, maybe three hostiles. On three?'

'On three,' Illya nodded.

So Napoleon counted, 'One, two, _three_ ,' and Illya shouldered the door open.

He saw lab benches, colourful flasks and test tubes, a Bunsen burner hissing near the middle of the room. A number of crass posters on one of the walls of women in bikinis. A second door on the other side. There was a man near that far door and another man at a lab bench very close to this one, and that was what Illya focussed on. He was already raising his gun as Napoleon reached past him to shoot at the man on the other side of the room, but the scientist closest to him raised his hand sooner, lifted a clear glass beaker, and threw the contents in a thin, glittering arc at Illya's face.

The pain was instant and absolute. Everything else vanished. Illya screamed and choked and his eyes were on fire, his nostrils full of an acrid scent. Then he was peripherally aware of other noises, of Napoleon saying something, of the sound of thudding footsteps, and a shot, another shot. Illya dropped to his knees so hard the jolt ran through his whole body. He was screaming and moaning out pain, the pain crushing through his head, his eyes the only thing that existed, as great orbs of burning pain. Somewhere through the pain he heard Napoleon saying, 'I need to leave you. The other guy ran. I'll be back, Illya, I promise. Hold tight.'

Illya replied but he hardly knew what he said. He pushed himself under the bench behind him, pressed his back hard against the wall, feeling the solidity of it against the curve of his spine, the solidity of the underside of the bench against his head. He was gasping breathlessly with pain and he clamped down on the screams because that sound could get him killed. He huddled around himself, drawing his knees up to his chest, everything a whirl of burning pain. He scraped his jacket sleeves over his face and it didn't help at all. He wanted to open his eyes but he couldn't open his eyes because they hurt so much.

He tried so hard to control his breathing. His breath was coming out in wheezes and every now and then a whimper broke through, and he clenched his arms around his knees and fought so hard to stay quiet. He was shaking so violently that above him glass rattled and tinkled on the bench surface. The Bunsen burner kept giving out its steady hiss somewhere in the middle of the room. Far, far away he could hear shouting and shots, and he bit his lip hard into his mouth and another moan escaped him, and his head spun and his stomach churned, and suddenly he was vomiting thickly onto the floor.

 _Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god…_

He rocked and shook and tried to clamp the need to scream inside him. What if Napoleon didn't come back? What if one of those shots had got Napoleon? What if Napoleon needed him, and he was here, underneath a lab bench, caught in a cage of agony and unable to do a thing? He could feel his U.N.C.L.E. special clenched somewhere between his knees and his chest but he couldn't unclench his hands enough to consider holding it.

What if Napoleon were dead? Was there a telephone here? No, he had his communicator. Of course he had his communicator. But he couldn't move, he couldn't unclench his hands, he couldn't –

And then footsteps thudding on the floor again, and then – oh, such a beautiful sound – Napoleon saying, 'Illya? Illya, it's all right. I've cleared them out. All dead or incapacitated. I can get you out of here.'

Illya opened his mouth that was dry and full of the taste of vomit. He tried to speak but only a wail of pain came out, and then another, and then another, like a flood of waves all crashing in to the shore. Napoleon was pulling him out from under the bench, saying, 'There's not too much on your face, but your eyes, Illya – '

He felt Napoleon's hands on his face, his fingers trying to pull up the lid of one eye. Illya couldn't bear to think of anyone making contact with that terrible site of pain, and he wailed, 'No, no, don't touch.'

'Illya, I have to,' Napoleon said, his fingers still touching Illya's forehead, his other hand at the back of Illya's head. He prised the eyelid up and said shakily, 'Jesus Christ...'

Illya stared into a confused haze and wasn't sure if his eye were even open or still closed. Then Napoleon was making him walk across the room and he stumbled into a hard edge, then there was water running and Napoleon forced him to bend his head into the lab sink. The water was running over his face and over the eyes that Napoleon was ruthlessly forcing open one at a time, but the pain was still so bad he felt dizzy and the water made it so much worse.

'I can't see, Napoleon,' he said. Water spluttered into his mouth and he spat it out. His voice was thin and shaking as an old man's.

'Both eyes?'

Napoleon forced his eyes open again and the water kept running, and Illya felt so dizzy he had to lean hard on the edge of the sink to keep himself from falling.

'B-both eyes. Can't see...'

'Okay, I'm getting you to hospital.'

The tap stopped running and Napoleon made Illya straighten up. Instead of wiping his face dry with something he hugged Illya to him and pressed his face against his own jacket so that Illya's skin was sponged dry.

'It's all right, Illya. I'm getting you to a hospital,' Napoleon said again. 'Listen, can you walk?'

He was shaking so hard that he couldn't think. He tried to speak and he cried in pain again. Napoleon put an arm around his back and shoved at him and Illya put one foot in front of the other, again and again, and moaned and cried as that pain drove through him. He was so dizzy. His knees almost gave out, but Napoleon held him up.

'Come on, Illya,' Napoleon said, his voice so soft and so worried. 'Come on. All right. Stairs. Come on, one at a time. That's it. There you go. Only three more. Okay...'

Illya walked and walked, and then there was the freezing air of outside hitting his face and his wet hair. That cold on his acid-burnt face hurt so much that he almost blacked out.

'Come on,' Napoleon said. 'I've got you. All right, into the car.'

And he was sitting, the door was closing with a solid metallic thump, he was pressing his hands over his face, moans pushing up through his throat as the engine started up and the car began to move. Napoleon was driving much faster than was safe.

And then they were there. Napoleon braked to a halt so suddenly that Illya flew forward and his cheek hit the dashboard, and Napoleon said, 'God, Illya, I'm sorry. But we're here. Come on. Come on, get out of the car.'

He was out and on the other side of the car, pulling Illya out, putting an arm around his back again and squeezing him hard and saying, 'I'll have to leave you in the ER, Illya. I have to get back and organise the clean-up team. I'm so sorry, Illya. I'm sorry.'

'It's your job,' Illya said through gritted teeth. Napoleon didn't need that extra guilt. But Illya wanted to plead with him to stay. He wanted to plead. He cried out again, a lurching moan of pain, and Napoleon held him more tightly. Everything was a mad whirl as the air got warmer and a babble of voices rose around him. He was being pushed down into the familiar feeling of a hospital wheelchair, and Napoleon touched Illya's shoulder and said, 'Good luck, _tovarisch._ '

Then he was gone. Illya shook and his teeth clashed together and someone was speaking to him, very loud and very clearly, but he couldn't understand a word. The wheelchair was moving and those Swedish voices kept talking and talking, and he strained to understand but he was dizzy and breathless. Hands touched him. He was urged out of the chair and onto a bed and someone was trying to get his jacket off him, and he was so cold that he hung onto it for a moment even though he could smell the sick on it.

' _Nej, nej_ ,' the voices were saying, and the jacket was taken and replaced with a blanket. Someone loosened his tie and popped the button on his collar. Someone was doing something at his head, pulling him up the bed, tilting his head back off the end of the bed, and there was water running again, fingers forcing his eyes open again, water and more water. Oh, how that hurt. He couldn't see. He couldn't think...

' _Vilket språk talar du?_ ' someone asked very clearly, and then with a heavy accent, 'What language do you speak? _Vad är ditt namn, tack?_ '

The pain was making him gasp for breath. His hands were clenched into immovable rocks. He forced his mouth to move. He said, 'Illya. Illya – Kuryakin,' and then he ground out another cry of pain through clenched teeth. He felt as if he were going to be sick again.

He could hear them talking, those lilting Swedish voices, a little interchange between men and women, and he couldn't work out what they were saying. They took his tie all the way off and struggled with unbuckling and then stripping off his shoulder holster. He wondered about his gun. Perhaps Napoleon had it. He ought to know where his gun was.

They unbuttoned his shirt and the cold disc of a stethoscope touched his chest above his heart. Someone was taking his pulse. He turned his head wildly, staring into a white blur, and hands touched both sides of his head, stilling him gently but firmly. And then they asked again, 'What language?'

He heaved in breath. A hand came down onto his forehead, a thumb pulled one of his eyelids open, light swam hazily, and the water started running over his eyes again. He should be able to manage in English but he was grasping even for English words.

' _Русский_ ,' he managed. ' _Україна_.'

He couldn't stop it; his stomach lurched again. He was retching drily while hands turned him on his side and someone stroked his shoulder in gentle reassurance. He retched once more and something bitter and liquid spilled out of his mouth, and then he tried to turn back, and they let him, that hand still stroking him, the water coming back to flush over his eyes. His teeth were chattering. His hands were clenched but they were shaking. Someone pressed a cloth to his mouth, wiping his lips, and he tried to remember a word in any language for _thank you_ , and failed.

They were raising his legs, they were tucking more blankets over him. There was a sharp sting in his arm and gradually the sharpest edges of the pain faded. He felt so cold, so shaky, and he tried to blink against the water they were pouring over his eyes because it _hurt_ , but they wouldn't let him. He struggled to see through the pouring water, moved his eyes jerkily left and right, tried to find some kind of shape or colour to latch onto. It must be the water blurring everything like this. It had to be.

And then there was a hand on his arm, a warm voice very close to his ear.

'Illya? Illya, can you hear me? Illya, can you understand what I'm saying?'

' _Так так_ ,' he said, and realised only as he answered in Ukrainian that she was speaking Ukrainian to him. The relief was so huge that he sobbed, he just let go, and she stroked his arm and said, 'Illya, I'm Dr Avramenka. You can call me Lena. All right, Illya?'

Her voice was an anchor in the busy room.

'Yes, y-yes,' he said shakily.

'Illya, I'm a cardiologist here at the hospital, but I come from Lviv. There's nothing wrong with your heart. I was called down here so I could talk to you, because the doctors are having trouble knowing if you can understand. Illya, can you speak any Swedish?'

'I – I – ' He took in air, tried so hard to focus through the pain. 'I speak some,' he said, 'and – and – fluent in English. But – I'm having trouble – '

'All right, Illya,' she said softly, rubbing his shoulder gently. 'You're in shock, and that can do funny things to the mind, yes? Don't worry for now about other languages. I can stay here for a while and speak to you in Ukrainian or Russian. Which would you prefer?'

'Ukrainian,' he said instantly. 'Thank you. I'm so – '

But another wave of pain pressed through him, and a moan pushed past his lips. She stroked his arm.

'All right. I know, Illya. I know it's very painful. You have something corrosive in your eyes. They think it's acid. It's caused a lot of damage to your corneas. Illya, do you know exactly what the substance is? It's important.'

He gritted his teeth, tried to focus. 'I don't – I think it was acid. S-someone threw – they threw – '

She spoke swiftly in Swedish then switched again to Ukrainian. 'You don't know exactly what it was?'

He was so dizzy. He was spinning round and round. 'No. Don't know. I'm an agent, I was – '

'They found your card,' she told him, stroking his shoulder again. 'It's all right, Illya. But I have to explain some things to you. Do you think you can listen to what I say? Do you feel able to take it in?'

They had stopped irrigating his eyes. The water had stopped and the blur was still there. They were dabbing his face dry and scrubbing water from his hair, and he thought, _They've given up. They've given up trying…_ But he still couldn't see. He couldn't see...

'Illya, the nurse will put some cream on the burns on your face and some drops in your eyes and then you'll be bandaged up,' the Ukrainian doctor said very clearly. 'Can you listen to me? I need to explain some things to you.'

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes...'

'All right.' She stopped stroking his shoulder and took hold of his hand. She stroked his fingers until they relaxed enough that he could hold on to hers. Her hand was soft and warm. He turned to look her and there was just a thick blur. 'Illya, whatever acid it is in your eyes, it's done a lot of damage,' she said clearly.

'Yes,' he said faintly. 'Okay.'

'Illya, it is very unlikely that you'll be able to see again,' she said in a low, steady voice. 'Do you understand that? There isn't very much that can be done after burns like this, and your corneas are very badly damaged. You are probably not going to recover any useful vision.'

The bottom dropped away from his stomach. He felt as if he were falling. He was spinning round. He tightened his hand on hers as the pain seared again, as someone put icy cream onto the most painful parts of his face, on his eyelids and eyebrows and his cheek. They dripped those drops into his eyes, and his eyes stung, and then a numbness started to creep over them that didn't entirely efface the pain.

'I – I – ' he tried to say, but there were no words.

They were lifting his head up a little, speaking to him, and the Ukrainian doctor said, 'A few bandages, Illya. Some pads over your eyes and then bandages.'

There were kind, gentle hands, someone supporting his head, and they were putting something over his eyes, and then the bandages that wrapped around and around. The confused blur turned to black.

'Illya,' the doctor said gently. 'I need to know that you understand what I've told you about your eyes.'

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes.'

 _Oh god…_ The reality of what she had told him was sinking through the thick, thick layers of shock. No useful vision. No sight. That last moment, that frozen moment standing in the doorway to that lab, the coloured test-tubes, the tawdry posters, the flickering strip lighting and that man raising his hand with a beaker of clear liquid… And that was it. He felt as if he were falling. There was nothing beneath him. He began to sob.

That wonderful doctor leant over him and eased him up a little to put her arms around him, and she just held him, rocked him, whispered words of comfort to him, and then she began to sing softly, gently into his ear, singing lullabies that he had heard from his mother's lips so long ago.

'I have two children,' she told him between songs. 'They are five and seven, and I sing these songs to them every night that I can, even though they are half little Swedes.'

Illya didn't reply, but he listened to her soft voice and thought of his own mother. And then the dropping fear came over him and the pain became overwhelming, and she began to sing again.

'Where did you grow up, Illya?' she asked after a while, after his breathing had settled to a more steady rhythm and some of the tension had left his body. She settled him back down on soft pillows and offered him water, and then asked again, 'Where did you grow up? Tell me about yourself.'

He swallowed the water and licked his lips, and then said, 'Kyiv. I was born in Kyiv, just after the famine.'

'Ah,' she said slowly, with that slight hollowness in her voice that he was used to from people who knew about that awful time. 'Yes, I was a child then. I haven't been to Kyiv. Did you like it there?'

He remembered the beautiful buildings and the light sparkling on the Dnieper, the snow in the winter and the bright summer sun. He had that lurching feeling again because he couldn't see, because he would never see the Dnieper sparkling in the sun again. He suddenly thought of his apartment, the mundane lines of his apartment, of the view from Napoleon's balcony over the East River, of the angles and glittering light on the windows of the Manhattan skyscrapers. Not seeing them. Never seeing them again. How could that be true? How could it possibly be true?

He fought to push that falling feeling away, and thought of Kyiv again, and said, 'Yes, I was very happy there.'

His words slurred a little because he felt exhausted, and she asked, 'Will you sleep a little?'

'No,' he said.

He couldn't bear the thought of sleeping in this place. He felt so vulnerable. He was still shaking. He couldn't stop shaking. Someone came into the room then and spoke Swedish, and he didn't even try to understand, but then Dr Avramenka said, 'Illya, I need to take your temperature and your blood pressure. Now, we want you to change out of these clothes anyway, and you will have to wear a gown until someone can fetch you pyjamas. Then we'll take you up to the ward and find you a proper bed. Can I help you change?'

He agreed without even really thinking about it. Everything was tangled up with shaking and pain and thinking _I'm not going to see again. No useful vision.._. He let her undress him like a doll and he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the gown, and then he lay passively while she took his blood pressure and temperature. Then there was talking again between her and others in the room, and Illya lay in his haze, shaking.

'All right, Illya. There's a bed being made up for you in the ward,' Dr Avramenka said gently. 'Let me help you into the wheelchair. It's right by the bed. Right here.'

So Illya sat up, and everything swam. The doctor's kind, strong hands helped him, other hands helped him, he let his trembling legs drop him into the wheelchair. Blankets were tucked over him, a hand was pressed onto his shoulder. Dr Avramenka said, 'The orderly is going to push the chair, and I'll be alongside.'

The chair moved. He bit his lip and let himself be pushed, felt that odd feeling of sitting still and being wheeled over a hard floor. There were sounds of other people talking in Swedish. The chair stopped. Elevator doors opening. The different sound of a metallic room as he was wheeled inside, and then the slight jolt, the hum of the cables. A hand was on his arm and Dr Avramenka asked, 'Are you doing all right, Illya?'

'Yes,' he murmured as the doors opened again, as he was wheeled out of the elevator. He felt as if he were falling, but he was all right. He listened to all the odd little sounds, to the words of Swedish being exchanged above his head, somewhere outside of his bubble of shock. And then he was being helped into a bigger, softer bed. Crisp, clean blankets were being folded efficiently over him, and Dr Avramenka said, 'That's it. You're settled in on the ward.' She spoke in Swedish to someone else, then said, 'Now, here, Illya. Here is a cup of tea. I want you to drink it down, and we will talk about your pain.'

He took the china mug in shaking hands and took a sip of the liquid. The tea was hot and terribly sweet, and his hands shook and it spilled on the blanket. The doctor's kind hands closed over his and helped him bring it steadily to his mouth again. He turned away from the sweetness, but the doctor said, 'No, I want you to drink it now, all of it. The sugar will help.'

So he drank the tea to the dregs, even the undissolved grainy mess of sugar at the bottom, then the doctor asked him careful questions about his pain, and a moment later he was given another injection which numbed the edges of it even more.

'What time is it?' he asked.

'Almost seven,' she told him.

He felt so disconnected. He wondered if there were windows on this ward, if the windows had blinds, if the night were inky outside now. He tried to remember if he had seen the sunset today. The sun would rise in the morning and he wouldn't see it brightening the sky. The urge to cry thickened his throat, and he swallowed hard.

 _Surely Napoleon will be back soon…_

He was so tired. The pain made him so tired. But he couldn't imagine ever sleeping.

'Illya, is there anyone here that I can call?' Dr Avramenka asked. 'Is there anyone who can sit with you?'

Illya thought. There were a few local agents, but he didn't know any of them. They hadn't even checked in at the local headquarters. They hadn't needed to. They'd spoken via communicator to let them know about the mission, and they would be available for clean-up. But no, no one he knew. There was just Napoleon. He hoped to god that the clean-up was routine and safe.

'I'm waiting for my friend to come back,' he said rather shakily. 'My partner. He had to leave me, finish the mission.'

She stroked his arm softly. 'All right. I'm sure he'll be here soon. You just try to relax, Illya. Let the painkiller work.'

Try to relax... He didn't know how to relax. He was still shaking. The pain was still terrible. He was still so scared.


	2. Chapter 2

Napoleon was so tired as he drove back to the hospital that a few times he found himself taking junctions without even checking that they were clear. Luckily the roads were quiet on this bitterly cold and dark winter evening, and he got back to the hospital safely, but if there had been more traffic he might have arrived in an ambulance. He couldn't afford that. He knew that Illya would need him.

He stepped into the emergency department full of dread, and tried to ask for Illya in his awkward, inexpert Swedish. The relief when the receptionist said, 'I can speak English if you prefer,' was huge.

He followed her directions to the ward, although he feared he wouldn't be allowed in. It was almost nine and he was sure visiting hours would be over. But he needed to see Illya. He was prepared to use his U.N.C.L.E. authority if he had to. He was so worried about Illya. He had been in such a terrible state when he left him, consumed with pain, and he was full of dread of what he would see when he walked into the ward. He had seen acid burns before. They were terrible things.

He saw him as soon as he stepped in through the double doors. He was lying in a crisply made bed towards the end of the ward, and half his face was covered in bandages, only the tip of his nose and his mouth and chin visible at the bottom. A woman was sitting with him, a rather stout lady in a white coat, her hand on his arm as she spoke to him in words Napoleon couldn't quite make out at that distance. Then a ward sister bustled over to Napoleon and tried to usher him out, so he got out his U.N.C.L.E. card and forcefully made his case. He was damned if he wouldn't get to see Illya when he was only a few yards away from him.

When at last he was allowed through he strode faster than the ward sister until he reached his partner's side.

'Illya,' he said swiftly.

A release of tension melted through Illya, and he said, ' _Napoleon_.'

'Hey, how are you, partner?' he asked, putting a hand on his shoulder, eyeing the thick bandages with great concern. His heart was giving little leaps of fear. He didn't want to accept what those bandages might mean. 'Are you over-egging it for the attention of the nurses again?' he asked, trying to sound light and cheerful, and almost managing.

'I – ' Illya said, but he faltered, his voice breaking a little, and then he turned his head towards the woman on the other side of the bed and spoke to her in what sounded to Napoleon like Russian. She replied to him with a smile, patting him on the arm, then looked up at Napoleon.

'Mr Solo, why don't you sit down?' she said in accented English, and Napoleon pulled a rather flimsy plastic moulded chair closer to the bed. 'I'm Dr Avramenka,' she continued as he sat. 'I'm not Illya's doctor but I am from Ukraine and Illya was having some trouble focussing on second languages due to shock, so the team brought me down to help out.'

'Oh, well that was very kind of you,' Napoleon said, but he wanted to talk to Illya, not to this woman, no matter how nice she was. Illya almost never struggled with English. On the rare occasions he grasped for a word it always took Napoleon by surprise. 'Illya, I – '

'Mr Solo, Illya asked me to explain to you,' the Ukrainian doctor said rather forcefully, and Napoleon's gaze flickered between her and Illya. 'It hasn't been good news for him. The doctors in the emergency room spent a long time irrigating his eyes and doing everything they could, but his corneas are very badly damaged. It's unlikely he's going to recover any useful sight.'

Napoleon felt the floor drop away from under him. He stared at Illya, at his bandaged face and his pale lips and his clenched hands, and he felt as if there were nothing under his feet.

'Are – are they sure?' he faltered.

She smiled thinly. 'The human body can give us surprises, but yes, Mr Solo, they are almost entirely sure. Now, Illya is very tired and in a lot of pain. He is recovering from shock, and he's on strong painkillers. I think it will be good for you to stay with him a little while, but not too long. He needs sleep. See if you can persuade him to try to sleep, because so far I've failed.'

'Okay,' he said dazedly. 'All right. Yes, of course.' He took Illya's hand and squeezed it, staring at his bandaged face, wishing he could see more than just his mouth and the end of his nose. 'Oh, Illya...'

The doctor put her hand on Illya's shoulder and spoke to him in what Napoleon realised was Ukrainian, not Russian, then she looked at Napoleon and smiled, her eyes sympathetic.

'I'll leave you alone now. I'm afraid I have to get home. But I will come back to see Illya in the morning.'

She bent and kissed what little of Illya's forehead was visible, spoke to him briefly and then left the ward.

'Nice woman,' Napoleon said, watching her go.

'Yes,' Illya said rather blankly. 'Yes, I think she's decided I need the presence of a mother.'

The hollowness of Illya's voice was worrying.

'Illya, are you all right?' Napoleon asked.

Illya turned his head towards Napoleon with a wry little twist of his lips. He was in there, under those bandages. There was his mop of blond hair, wildly disordered, and his mouth and chin. But he was so cut off. Napoleon wished he could see his eyes.

'Well, I've lost my eyebrows and my eyelashes,' Illya said.

'They'll grow back,' Napoleon replied gravely. He knew Illya was trying hard to put on a front, but he saw straight through it. 'But, Illya, your eyes... I – I don't know what to say...'

He couldn't think of a single thing that could help in any way. He wanted to say wonderful things that would help, that would magically make this better, but nothing would. The whole thing was too momentous for coherent thought.

Illya drew in a hitching breath, and suddenly he was sobbing, nakedly, desperately, turning his head and lifting his hands but then dropping them back to the sheets in despair. Napoleon reached out, took his hands. Illya's fingers clenched around his but the sobs kept coming.

'Illya, Illya,' he whispered.

He had no idea what to do or say. He looked around rather desperately, as if he hoped someone could tell him what to do, but no one did. There was a nurse attending to another patient and deliberately not looking towards Illya, it seemed. A man in another bed gave Napoleon a look of sympathy, but what help was that when your partner was sobbing because his life had come crashing down around him?

'Illya,' he said. 'Illya...'

He pulled his partner gently closer, pressing his arms around him, stroking his back. 'It'll be all right, Illya,' he promised, although he had no idea how. 'It'll be all right.'

Illya sobbed into his shoulder, his whole body shaking, his mouth hot against Napoleon's neck. Then the sobs quietened to little shudders, and then silence. Illya stilled, breathed in deeply, and pulled himself awkwardly away from Napoleon's embrace, resting back on the pillows again. What little Napoleon could see of his cheeks was drained of colour.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm so sorry. What a display... I'm tired and it's s-so painful even with the drugs.'

Napoleon took his hand again and squeezed it.

'There is _nothing_ to be sorry for,' he assured him. 'Nothing. God, Illya...' He still didn't know what to say. 'Can I – can I ask the nurse for some more painkiller?'

Illya smiled wanly. 'I'm at my limit,' he said. 'They've done what they can. Any more and I'd be out of it.'

Napoleon wondered if that would be so bad. Sleep seemed like it would be a refuge.

'Tell me about what happened,' Illya said then, a little desperately, it seemed, as if he wanted to be able to think about something else. 'Tell me about the clean-up.'

'Ah, well, there isn't much to tell,' Napoleon said with a shrug. When he thought about that place he saw Illya under that bench, consumed with pain. 'When I got back there I called in agents from the local office, and they arranged secure transport and contacted the morgue. I – er – changed the clip to bullets after you were injured, Illya. I needed to be certain of my shots.'

'Ah,' Illya said, but that was all.

'Well, I went through the place with a fine tooth comb and I extracted all the useful files. You were right about there being good stuff in the lab. It's all over at the Stockholm HQ now being looked over. I went back to HQ with the prisoners and saw they were processed, and I came here. I left some loose ends for the local guys to clean up. I needed to be here.'

'I'm glad you're here,' Illya said sincerely. 'I am so glad.'

'You look tired,' Napoleon said. He could see so little of Illya's face, but he looked exhausted.

Illya gave a faint laugh. 'I feel like I'm falling over lying down,' he said. 'I feel – ' But he broke off, shaking his head, and Napoleon squeezed his hand.

A nurse came over then and looked critically at Illya, and then at Napoleon.

'I am sorry, you must go now,' she said in careful English. 'It is late. Mr Kuryakin needs to rest.'

Illya's hand tightened around Napoleon's, a little instinctive reaction, it seemed, and Napoleon said, 'Just a few more minutes, miss. I really need to – '

'No,' she said very firmly. 'I know you have the U.N.C.L.E. card, but still you must go. Mr Kuryakin needs rest. You may come back tomorrow, after nine.'

So Napoleon sighed and bent over Illya to hug him firmly, whispering in his ear, 'I'll be as close as I can. I'll be back first thing in the morning, I promise. You'll be all right.'

'Yes, I know,' Illya said, but his arms were tight around Napoleon's back and he didn't seem to want to let go.

'Twelve hours,' Napoleon told him. 'You'll be asleep for most of that. Be a good little agent, huh? Do as the nurses tell you. And try to sleep, okay?'

He was pleased to see Illya smile a little as he let go and rested back down onto the pillows, but he hated to walk out of the ward. He felt as if there were an invisible thread tugging between his shoulder blades. _He_ needed sleep too, but twelve hours seemed a long time.

((O))

Illya lay in the bed, feeling very alone now that Napoleon was walking away. He listened to the maze of little sounds around him, the little sounds of other bodies, the footsteps and movements. He listened to the final fading tread of Napoleon leaving the ward.

He had never felt so vulnerable. If Thrush were to burst in here there would be nothing he could do. He had no way to defend himself. But then, perhaps he didn't care. He was so very tired and so very sore.

'Now, Mr Kuryakin.'

He jumped. He hadn't realised that nurse was still standing by his bed. He turned his head toward her, wondering what she looked like, if she were tall or short, young or old. Was she pretty? Wouldn't Napoleon have said something if she were? Did it matter if she were pretty, if he couldn't see?

'It's late,' the nurse said, speaking carefully to him in English. It was easier to understand now he was more relaxed, now Napoleon had been and gone. 'You have missed dinner, Mr Kuryakin, but you need to have something to eat, so I bring you some tea and toast. Do you like jam? Strawberry? Lingonberry?'

He didn't feel as if he would be able to eat anything. He was spinning again. But he muttered something and then he lay there for what felt like a long time, and then when he had almost forgotten about food she was back, helping him to sit up, helping him solicitously by touching his hands and guiding them to the plate of toast and cup of tea she had put on a table wheeled over the bed. The toast felt so dry he could hardly swallow it, even with sips of the sweet tea. The tea tasted of nothing. He chewed mechanically, forced the toast down, felt it settle in his stomach. He swallowed the last of the tea. Then the nurse offered him the choice of a bed pan or helping him to the toilet, and he chose the latter, but when he stood the world spun so much that she brought him a wheelchair.

Back in bed, he lay in his utter darkness, feeling the solid bandages around his head, itching him through his hair and where his skin was undamaged. Where it was burnt it seared and throbbed and made him feel sick. The pain in his eyes made him feel sick right in the core of his body. The nurse said something about his needing to sleep, and he thought he would never be able to sleep. How could he sleep like this, in so much pain, in so much turmoil?

Everything was quiet around him, the soft settling down of night. Sometimes he heard the quiet tread of a nurse, or someone else in the ward coughing or grunting. After a little time someone nearby started to snore. He had just grown very heavy and sleepy when an alarm started beeping, jerking him awake, and the pain that had started to dull throbbed back again in burning waves. There were quiet voices, a nurse and a man speaking in Swedish from a little way down the ward. He tried to grasp the words and phrases but it felt like too much effort.

He lifted a hand to the bandages around his head, fingering them lightly. Surely if he took them off he would be able to see? He had to be able to see. He felt a huge welling of pain in his chest and a kind of sob pushed through his lips. Then footsteps approached his bed, someone spoke his name, touched his pulse, stroked his hair. She touched a cup to his lips and instinctively he drank what tasted like some sweet fruit juice. He held the need to cry inside, in front of this kind, anonymous woman, and she took the little plastic cup away when it was empty, fussed with his blankets, stroked his hair again, and walked away, her footsteps hollow on the hard floor.

Sleep came like a warm cloak slipping over him. He let that warm comfort take him away from this terrible world.

((O))

Napoleon's watch minute hand was ticking over onto the twelve as he reached the ward door. The hour hand was on the nine. No matter what they said, he was coming in. No one stopped him at the doors, but he noticed that the curtains were drawn around Illya's bed, and a nurse put a hand on his arm as he approached.

'The doctor is examining him,' she said in Swedish.

Napoleon wondered if he could push his luck. He put on his most charming smile. This woman was young and blonde and pretty, and it was easy to look charming for her.

'Er, could you ask if I can – ?' he began.

She shook her head and sighed, but she went to the curtain and put her head through and spoke to someone in there. Then she turned back to Napoleon and nodded.

'Go in, please,' she told him.

Napoleon slipped through the gap in the curtain to see Illya sitting up in bed looking extremely tired and extremely tense. A nurse was unwrapping the bandage from his head, and it was sticking on some of the wounds. He winced each time it pulled.

'Hi,' Napoleon said, stepping to the head of the bed and putting the small bag he carried down on the floor.

'Napoleon?'

Illya didn't move his head but he raised a slightly trembling hand, and Napoleon took it immediately. Illya's face was almost expressionless, but all of his emotion was evident through his grip on Napoleon's hand.

'The very same. Good morning, partner mine. How did you sleep?'

'Terribly,' Illya said grimly. 'What with the pain and the noise on the ward, and – ' He broke off, but Napoleon understood the unspoken thought.

Napoleon looked briefly up at the doctor and nurse who were attending to Illya, then turned his attention back to his partner.

'Well, maybe something will have changed when they take off the pads,' Napoleon cheered him.

Illya's mouth twisted and his hand fidgeted in Napoleon's. Napoleon immediately felt bad for saying that. He knew there wasn't really any hope, and he knew equally that deep down Illya was holding on to the same vain thought.

He pressed his other hand over Illya's too, holding it snugly, and watched as the nurse carefully eased the pads off first one eye, then the other. His eyes were gummed closed and the nurse very carefully wiped at the discharge with cotton wool swaps until his eyes were able to open.

Illya blinked, and Napoleon said, 'Jesus Christ.'

He couldn't stop those words breaking through. Illya's eyes looked terrible. The skin all around was blistered, red, and inflamed, and his eyes were red too, a bright, awful red, crusted with yellow at the corners, weeping copiously. His irides and pupils were lost in that awful mess. The nurse bent in to carefully wipe away the worst of the yellow gunk, and Illya hissed and then gasped with pain. His hand tightened on Napoleon's until it hurt.

'Illya, do you see anything?' Napoleon asked, and Illya said, 'No.'

The doctor spoke then, using very careful English. 'Mr Kuryakin? I am going to shine a light at your eyes, yes? I need you to tell me what you see.'

'What is the point? I don't see _anything_ ,' Illya replied immediately. He sounded impatient, but Napoleon knew he was covering his fear.

The doctor used his bright torch anyway, and asked Illya, 'What do you see?'

Illya sighed. His hand was still very tight on Napoleon's. His eyes moved seemingly randomly as the doctor flicked the light back and forth before them. The nurse dabbed away tears with a tissue.

'I can tell there's light,' he said. He held up his hand briefly as if he wanted to ward the pen torch away. 'It hurts a lot,' he said tightly.

'I am sorry but I have to make a thorough examination,' the doctor told him, then said something swift and incomprehensible in Swedish to the nurse. 'You can see colour? You can see shape?'

'No,' Illya said tightly. 'No colour. No shapes.'

It was awful to look at. It was awful to see Illya's eyes so damaged and disfigured, and to really understand how little was getting through that damage, and to feel Illya's distress through his grip. Napoleon looked behind him and quietly sat in the moulded plastic chair by the bed, not letting go of Illya's hand. He sat there in silence as the doctor went through his examination, then the nurse cleaned Illya's eyes again and administered eye drops, then dressed his wounds until his face was half lost in bandages again. The doctor spoke with him briefly about his pain levels and Illya was given an injection, and then the doctor patted him on the arm and moved on to his next patient.

Illya sat upright in the bed after the doctor had left, very still, his lips very pale. Napoleon looked at him in concern. He had seemed calm through most of the examination but now his breathing was becoming faster, coming in short, sharp breaths. He was shaking. And then he said desperately, 'I can't, I can't. Napoleon, I can't do this. I don't know what to do. I can't do this.'

Napoleon took hold of both his hands and stroked them with his thumbs, his insides twisting at Illya's distress.

'Calm down, Illya,' he said softly. 'Calm down. You don't have to do anything. Just try to calm down. I'll look after you. It'll be all right.'

Illya made a jerking noise that was part laugh, part sob, part sharp in-breath.

'How – How will it be – How can it be – ?'

'I'll look after you,' Napoleon promised. 'Illya...'

Illya's hands tightened hard on his, and then he drew in a deep, shaking breath, his lips parted.

'This is real, Napoleon,' he said in a strange, trembling voice. 'It's real. I – I can't see anything. I think I thought – I hoped – '

'I know,' Napoleon said, because he had hoped too.

'I've lost everything,' he said. 'I've lost my life.'

Napoleon stroked his hands again, softly, firmly. He hardly knew what to say. He was on the outside of Illya's suffering and he didn't know what he could do to make it better.

'Illya, I'll take care of you,' he said again. 'I promise, I will be here with you. Okay?'

'Okay,' Illya said shakily. 'Okay.'

'You'll be all right. Okay? It's early days. Very early days.'

'Yes,' Illya said.

He sat in silence for a long time, just letting Napoleon stroke his hands, calming down, breathing very slowly. Then he cleared his throat and said, 'Napoleon, will you help me to the bathroom?'

'Oh, er – ' He suddenly felt awkward. How would he do this? But he smiled and said, 'Yeah, of course I will. Oh, and I've brought you your pyjamas. I stopped off at a department store and bought you a pair of slippers, too. I can – I mean – if you need me to I can help you change?'

'Oh, thank you,' Illya said. He sounded just as awkward. He passed his hands over the blanket and pushed it from his lap, then swung his legs over the side of the bed.

'Need a hand?' Napoleon asked, and he steadied Illya as he slipped to the floor and straightened up.

'Yeah, thank you,' Illya muttered.

'There are curtains around the bed,' Napoleon said. 'Do you want to change into pyjamas now?'

Illya grimaced. 'Yes, I would rather change now than walk through the ward in a gown that fastens at the back, thank you.'

'All right, well – ' Napoleon got the pyjamas out of the bag and put them on the bed. 'Uh – bottoms,' he said, holding them out. Illya took them and slipped them on under the gown, then Napoleon helped him undo the ties at the back and he shrugged the thing off, replacing it with the pyjama shirt.

'Here. You've got them out of order,' Napoleon said as Illya started to button the shirt. 'Let me – '

'I can do it,' Illya said quickly, and he turned away from Napoleon's hands and began to button the shirt again, taking it very carefully from the collar downwards. 'All right. Now, will you help me to the bathroom?'

Napoleon stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. Illya's head was tilted down and half his face was lost in the bandages. He felt for Napoleon's hand and gripped hold of it. Napoleon put his other arm around his back.

'Okay, Illya. Let's get through these curtains, and then we'll find the bathroom,' he said softly, nudging him forwards. This felt so strange, so alien. He didn't know what to do, how best to help his friend. But he would have to get used to it. He knew that. It was awful, but he would have to get used to it.


	3. Chapter 3

'All right. A couple more steps. One more,' Napoleon said, holding Illya by the arm. His friend was taking teetering little steps, holding a hand out in front of him, his lips pressed together hard in his concentration. 'All right, here's the stairs. Step down.'

'How many?' Illya asked tightly, shuffling his foot forward until he felt the sharp concrete edge.

Napoleon glanced over the short flight of concrete steps that led from the front entrance to the street below and said, 'Five. No, six, I think.'

'Five or six?' Illya asked irritably.

'Six,' Napoleon said, counting again. 'It's six, Illya. Don't worry. I'll tell you when you're at the bottom.'

Illya had been let out of the hospital after three days. He had been judged well enough to travel as long as he went straight to a medical facility on getting back to New York for his burns to be checked and cleaned, so Napoleon had booked the flights and come to fetch him this morning. The cases were already in the cab he had taken from the hotel.

'That's it,' Napoleon said as Illya took another step down. 'Three left. Okay. And another. All right, you're on the level, on the sidewalk. The cab's a couple of yards away on the other side.'

'The other side of the road? Or the other side of the sidewalk?'

'The other side of the sidewalk. Only a yard away now.'

How had they come to this? Illya was moving so slowly, so awkwardly. The thickest bandages had been removed now but he still had patches over his eyes to protect them, and dressings over the other burns on his face. He was still in a lot of pain, but it was his mental state that really worried Napoleon. He seemed so fragile, so lost.

'Now, the cab's just here,' Napoleon said, and Illya nodded, tension in every line of his body. He reached out a hand, moving it from side to side, and said, 'Where?'

'Here,' Napoleon told him again, closing a hand over his and letting go of Illya with his other hand to reach around him and open the door. 'Can you manage? Watch your head on the roof, won't you? Okay?'

He very carefully helped Illya into the back of the cab, putting a hand on the top of his head so he couldn't knock it, then patting him on the shoulder, before closing the door. He jogged round to the other side and got in, leaning forward briefly to the driver to tell him to take them to the airport.

'All right, Illya?' he asked as the cab moved off into the stream of traffic.

'Not really,' Illya said, his face straight ahead, his hands clenched on the edge of the seat as the cab accelerated and moved into another lane.

'Yeah, okay. Stupid question,' Napoleon murmured. Illya hadn't been all right since entering that lab. 'Well – er – Can I do anything to make it better? Can I – ?'

He broke off. Illya's face was turned a little away from him, tilted down. His knuckles were white where his hands clenched on the seat. His lips were bitten in, and Napoleon was almost sure that underneath the pads over his eyes he was crying. It was so hard to see Illya like this, so hard to know what to do. He tried to put himself in Illya's place, and hated it.

'Hey,' he said softly, putting his hand on Illya's knee. 'Just let me look after you. We'll be back in Manhattan by tonight. We'll go straight to the Infirmary. We'll be somewhere you know, with people you know. That'll help, huh?'

'Yes,' Illya said blankly, still with his head turned away. 'Yes, I suppose it will help.'

((O))

This whole process was bringing the reality of his blindness home to Illya with such force. He got out of the cab with Napoleon and stood there in the freezing air like an automaton waiting for instructions, feeling so vulnerable, so unable. He waited for Napoleon to take his arm, waited for Napoleon to say ever so gently, 'Come round the back of the cab, Illya, then there's a kerb. That's it, there's the kerb. Okay, I need to get a cart for the luggage, and – ' And Napoleon faltered, obviously just as much out of his depth as Illya.

'Look, I need to let go of you for a moment,' he said, and Illya growled, 'I'm not a china doll, Napoleon.'

Illya stood there, listening to the dull rattle and thump of Napoleon getting the luggage from the boot, and he did feel like a china doll, like a broken, useless, scared doll. Then a hand settled suddenly on his arm, and he turned his head, startled, because he thought Napoleon had moved away from him. He started to say, 'Napoleon, I – ' but a stranger's voice said, ' _Nej, jag är inte din vän. Han kommer för vagnen._ '

For a moment adrenaline surged, but then he realised it must be the cab driver. Then Napoleon was back saying, 'Better than a cart, I found a porter. Come on, Illya. _Ja, tack, tack._ '

So then he had to walk again, Napoleon holding his arm and warning him of every little thing, of every step, every door. He took him up to the desk to check in, dealt with the passports, parried the awkward, inquisitive questions, and then took him through to the first class lounge where Illya sat in a deep, comfortable chair and tried to ignore the pain, tried not to feel so vulnerable, tried to talk with Napoleon and drink a cup of coffee and eat the sweet butter cookies that came with it and not feel like his life had exploded into tattered shreds.

They were called for boarding before the rest of the passengers explicitly because he was blind, and he felt so singled out and strange. So many hands touched him without asking if he minded. So many voices were pitched as if he were a young child, or deaf. Napoleon took him up the stairs and into the cabin and led him to his seat, and the stewardesses fussed around him and spoke about how he would manage if there were an emergency, and offered him words of sympathy that made him feel nauseated.

He sat on the plane with his back pressed against the seat, trying not to rock, trying to stay calm. This all seemed so unreal. How could this have happened? How could any of this be true? It was like the strangest of bad dreams. How could it possibly be true?

The sounds of the plane droned through the air, vibrated through the seats, filled everything. It seemed to make the space into a blank. Illya didn't know if it were Waverly or Napoleon who had paid for first class, but someone had. It helped a little, perhaps, to have a bit more room and a bit more peace. But he could have been sitting anywhere. He felt so closed in with the pads over his eyes, and knowing that even if they were removed it would be no better. There would be some light, perhaps, but nothing else. What did it matter who was in front of them, or behind, or across the aisle? His face still burned, his eyes still burned. He still felt half numb. He hadn't thought that the numb feeling could possibly last so long, but it was as if his mind just wouldn't let him really latch on to the monumental truth of his blindness. He felt as if he were living in a dream.

'Hey, Illya. Lunch is coming round,' Napoleon said, nudging him lightly, and he jerked out of his daze.

'Oh,' he said. 'Oh, well, I'm not very hungry.'

'Illya, you're going to eat,' Napoleon said firmly. 'D'you want something to drink with it? Scotch and soda? Vodka? You'd like some vodka?'

Ah, the thought of the numbing power of alcohol was good.

'I shouldn't,' he said. 'The painkillers.'

'That doesn't mean you can't,' Napoleon said meaningfully. 'Hey, how about a martini? I can get you a martini.'

He and Napoleon had plenty of experience with painkillers, of just how much alcohol could be drunk to make them work more effectively, of how much was too much.

Illya sighed and shrugged and said, 'Gin and lime. I'll take a gin and lime.'

Perhaps that would smooth the edges of the pain. Perhaps it would make this easier to bear. He took the drink when it came and pushed at the food that was brought with a fingertip, trying to muster the enthusiasm to eat. What was the saying? The first bite is with the eye? He couldn't see it, so what did it matter?

'It's good stuff, Illya,' Napoleon urged him. 'Rye bread and smoked salmon and dill. Cream cheese on the other, I think.'

'The other?'

'Yeah, two open sandwiches,' Napoleon told him. 'Salmon on the left, cream cheese on the right.'

At least it was finger food. Trying to eat hot food with cutlery was so hard, and he hated resorting to a spoon. So he reached out and felt the plate and the edge of the bread, and then discovered it was an open sandwich by getting his fingers in the cream cheese, and he said in irritation, 'You could have said they were open.'

'I did, Illya,' Napoleon said softly.

Illya bit his tongue against the annoyance and frustration, and just picked up the food and began to eat.

The food was good. There was that to be said for first class on a Scandinavian airline. It tasted good. It was the first food he felt he'd really tasted in three days, and he suddenly felt hungry enough that he ate both open sandwiches, and then Napoleon offered him one of his.

'Are you sure?' Illya asked, and Napoleon said, 'I wouldn't dare stand between you and your food, not if you've finally gotten your appetite back.'

Illya smiled a little and took the offered sandwich and downed that too. Then he reached out for his drink, but he had forgotten where it was, and as he drew his hand back, searching, he knocked it. It spilled, cold and abrupt, all over his lap. The scent of alcohol and lime blossomed into the air.

'Oh!' Napoleon exclaimed, jerking away, and then patting at Illya's wet lap. Then there was a woman there, mopping at him and speaking in Swedish in a saccharine tone, and everything just collapsed inside him like a burst balloon.

'I'll go to the bathroom,' he said, and then as the hands kept patting at him he said in a voice verging on hysterical, ' _I'll go to the bathroom._ '

The hands stopped immediately.

'Okay,' Napoleon said as if he were calming a charging bull. 'Okay, Illya. Yes, thank you, _tack,_ yes, that's enough.'

He couldn't go to the bathroom. He fumbled at the lap belt that he hadn't bothered to undo after take-off, and he couldn't manage the buckle because he couldn't see it. He couldn't even unstrap himself from the seat, let alone navigate himself to the bathroom. He had no idea where the bathroom was, up the plane or down, left or right. He had no idea of anything. He was in a bubble and everything was out of reach, all voices in shadows, unseen things.

He tried again to undo the belt, and then Napoleon touched his shaking hands and loosened the strap so easily. He clenched his hands, feeling as if he were falling apart, as if everything were falling apart. His mind felt like a hive of bees, all buzzing, all screaming. Napoleon nudged him to his feet and walked with him, and then he smelt cleaning fluid and heard the door lock behind him, and with the click of the lock the sobs just jerked out of him. They fell out, one after the other, catching in his throat, pouring from his mouth. He didn't know what had happened, didn't know what to do, how to stop it.

Napoleon's arms were around him, holding him as tightly as he might hold a panicking innocent, a girl screaming as bullets flew. Illya sobbed. He didn't care if he could be heard through the thin bathroom walls. He didn't think. He just sobbed, and Napoleon held him, stroking him, making little shushing noises into his ear.

After a while he grew calm, and Napoleon said, 'Okay, buddy. You just sit here, huh?' and he steered Illya to sit on the closed toilet, and passed a hand tenderly over Illya's hair. Then Illya heard paper towels being pulled from their holder and Napoleon first lightly dabbed at his cheeks where the tears had come through the pads, and then at the cold wetness on his trousers from that spilled drink.

'I'll get you another drink,' Napoleon said, as if it were the loss of the drink alone that had caused this breakdown.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya murmured.

Napoleon put a hand on his shoulder. 'Hey,' he said. He stroked Illya's hair again, brushing his fringe from his forehead. In the velvet darkness all those touches came suddenly, as if from nowhere.

'I'm sorry,' Illya said. He shook his head. 'I didn't – I'm sorry...'

There was a shuffle of feet on the floor, a kind of grunt, and then Napoleon's voice came from much lower down. He must have crouched down to put himself on the same level as Illya sitting on the closed toilet.

'Don't be sorry,' Napoleon said. 'Now, are you in pain? Do you need another painkiller? It's – umm – it's almost one, Swedish time. Didn't you take your painkillers at nine?'

Illya pressed his hand against the rattling bottle of pills in his jacket pocket. Yes, he was in pain. Yes, his eyes hurt. They hurt even more so for that flood of tears. And his head ached, and he was tired, and he hardly knew whether the aching and the tiredness were related to his burns or to stress.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, another painkiller would be good.'

He drew out the bottle and Napoleon took it and opened it and said gently, 'Open up, Alice. Let's see if this shrinks you or grows you.'

'Huh?' Illya asked, puzzled, but Napoleon popped the pill in as he spoke, and Illya swallowed it dry.

'Let that take hold,' Napoleon said. 'Come back to your seat. I'll order you another drink. Let the painkiller take hold. We'll be back before you know it.'

'Yes,' Illya said rather quietly.

The thought of going home was a great, odd void. He couldn't imagine going back to his apartment, his sanctuary of books and music, and seeing nothing. He didn't know how he would cope, what he would do. He was glad that he would go first to the U.N.C.L.E. Infirmary, so that his burns could be monitored, his eyes monitored. He couldn't deal with the thought of just going home and accepting that this would be the rest of his life. The U.N.C.L.E. doctors would look at him. They would make their own pronouncements about his eyes. Maybe there would be a miracle.

'Come on,' Napoleon said, patting his arm. 'Let's get back out there, yes?'

Illya was glad as he walked back through the plane to his seat that he couldn't see the faces of the other passengers, who had almost certainly heard his sobs in the bathroom. They must be looking at him, but he couldn't see their curiosity or their pity. It was very isolating, this darkness. He settled in his seat and let Napoleon get him another drink, and when he had swallowed it all he let the soft vibration of the plane push through him, and lull him into something resembling sleep.

((O))

It was like Stockholm all over again. Illya had been in the Infirmary for all of five minutes before Napoleon got the call from Waverly to come to his office. He was exhausted, jet-lagged, at the end of his stamina after spending days and nights worrying about Illya, after spending the whole journey home worrying about Illya, helping Illya, watching him and trying to keep him somehow above water. Illya was just being taken through to an examination room when one of the nurses quietly tapped Napoleon on the arm and told him apologetically that Waverly wanted to see him at once.

He had known there was no use arguing. The nurse gave him a sympathetic look, but there was nothing she could do. All he could do was press Illya's arm and say, 'I'm sorry. I'll be back as soon as I can, but duty calls.'

He walked away without looking back, and stalked into Waverly's office ready to fight.

'Sir, I really need to – ' he began as soon as he walked through the door.

Waverly put a sheaf of paper down on his circular table and looked up with raised eyebrows.

'When I was brought up, Mr Solo, it was considered polite to say _good morning,_ or _good afternoon_ , depending on the time of day.'

'Er – good afternoon, sir,' Solo said, but then he tried again, 'Sir, Illya could really do with having someone with him right now.'

'Sit down, Mr Solo,' Waverly told him, waving vaguely at a chair. He waited for Napoleon to take his seat, then looked up very seriously. 'Now, Mr Solo, let's go through debriefing for the Stockholm affair.'

'Sir, I went through full debriefing in the Stockholm office – ' Napoleon began, but he stopped at Waverly's expression of annoyance and began to go carefully through everything, including what had happened to Illya, as dispassionately and calmly as he could.

'Then Mr Kuryakin's condition is as grave as the reports suggest?' Waverly asked as Napoleon concluded. 'Permanent blindness?'

Napoleon sighed. 'Well, the doctors here haven't had a chance to look at him but I see no reason to doubt the expertise of the men in Stockholm. Two or three of their doctors looked at him and they all agreed the damage was too bad.'

Just talking about it was almost too much. Verbalising the permanence of Illya's blindness to Waverly brought it home to him with a horrible jolt. He had lost his partner, and his partner had lost his job and so, so much more. He clenched his hands under the desk and tried to steady himself, telling himself he was just tired, it had been such a long few days. He could easily have cried.

'Well,' Waverly said, looking down at the papers on his desk and shuffling them awkwardly. 'Well, he'll have all the care we can give him, at any rate. He'll be properly supported.'

'Sir, he needs _my_ support,' Napoleon said meaningfully, glancing back at the closed office door. 'He doesn't have anyone in this country to look after him. I should be down there with him right now. He's going to be home soon and he'll need care...'

'That's just what you can't do, Mr Solo,' Waverly said tartly. 'I'm sorry. You need to be in Phoenix, as a direct result of your destruction of the Stockholm lab. I want you to look through these details and then be off.'

Napoleon gaped. 'But, sir, I – '

'Mr Solo,' Waverly said warningly.

'Sir, Illya's down there in the Infirmary having been told he's blind for life. He's _extremely_ vulnerable right now, he's still in shock, if you ask me, he's – '

'Mr _Solo_!'

He snapped his mouth shut at Waverly's expression.

'Will I have time to go and explain to Illya at least?' he asked.

Waverly half smiled, picking up his pipe and starting to tamp tobacco into the bowl.

'I'm sure you'll have time for that. Don't worry about Mr Kuryakin. We'll keep him quite safe here until you've got this affair tied up, and then I'll see about allowing you some leave. I'm very well aware that he'll need support, but he knows as well as you do that the affairs of the world don't stop for one man. Go to Phoenix, Mr Solo, and then you can see to your partner.'

Napoleon seethed all the way back down to the Infirmary, the Phoenix papers clenched under his arm. He would read them down there, with Illya, and perhaps that would give Illya some distraction. He wondered if Waverly had meant for this. He was a crafty old man. Perhaps he meant for Napoleon to distract Illya with the details of this affair. Perhaps he was taking Napoleon away from Illya in these early days to make sure Illya stayed in the Infirmary for a while instead of insisting on going home. Illya needed badly to stay in the Infirmary so his burns could be treated regularly and his eyes professionally cleaned and monitored. Perhaps he was trying to give Napoleon a break before he became a twenty-four hour carer for his best friend. He had promised Napoleon leave to look after him. That showed he had some empathy for the situation.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He was hardly even noticing the women in the corridors. Everything was wrapped up in Illya and worry and exhaustion. Phoenix would put him – how many hours on from New York? How many from Stockholm? He'd lost his grasp on the time zones he usually knew by heart. That was how tired and jet-lagged he was. God, maybe Waverly was right. Maybe he needed a few days of focus on something else…

He stepped briefly into the office he shared with Illya to pick up the office radio, then walked tiredly down into the Infirmary and met the eyes of one of the nurses. He really was tired. She was pretty, very pretty, but it didn't seem to matter.

'He's in Room Three,' she said without even asking him what he was after. The Infirmary was a small place and he supposed everyone knew by now what had happened to Illya.

'Thanks, Rosie,' he smiled, and he made his way down to the third of the little patients' rooms. When he pushed the door open there was a nurse in there with Illya, apparently trying to get him to do something he didn't want to do.

'I _don't_ have a temperature,' Illya was protesting in an irritated, tired tone. 'I'm not ill.'

'Mr Kuryakin, I need to take your temperature for the chart,' she said with infinite patience.

Napoleon smiled and came in through the door. This was so much more like the Illya that he knew.

'Come on, _tovarisch_ ,' he said. 'Let the lady do her job and then she'll leave you in peace.'

Illya looked pleased to see him, at least, and he grudgingly opened his mouth for the thermometer and sat patiently while the nurse took his pulse.

'There. You see how much better it is when you behave?' Napoleon asked with a smile as soon as the nurse had gone. He plunked down the radio on the side table. 'I brought you the office radio, Illya. I thought it might get you through the long hours.'

Illya turned his head towards the clatter of the radio touching down on the table, and his mouth twisted with a funny, rueful expression.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' he said, but he seemed depressed rather than buoyed by the gift.

'I – thought it would help,' Napoleon said uncertainly, taking a chair. 'Illya, I'm – '

Suddenly he didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do. This whole situation was such a terrible mess.

'I'm sorry, Napoleon,' Illya said then.

He reached out a hand and Napoleon took it. There were a few burns on his hand from where he had touched his face straight after he had been hit with the acid, but they were light and unbandaged, and the scabs were rough against Napoleon's palm.

'I'm sorry,' Illya said again. 'I appreciate the radio, really. It's just – '

He shook his head, but Napoleon thought he understood. That radio was such a stark reminder that he was reduced to only hearing what was around him. He couldn't read. He had shelves of books and journals, and he couldn't read a word.

He tightened his hand on Illya's, trying to think of a single thing to say. It was impossible. He had tried ever since he had first come in to see Illya after he had taken him to the hospital in Stockholm. No matter what he said he never felt that it covered _I'm sorry that your entire life has been turned upside down, your career ended, that you'll never see another damn thing from now until the day you die._ Nothing covered it. Nothing at all.

And then the words spilled out. He spoke on impulse, only thinking of how to get Illya through this awful time.

'Don't worry, Illya,' he said. 'I'll take care of you. Hey, why don't you move in with me, huh? I can help you until you're back on your feet, and we'll both save on rent.'

It seemed like the only viable thing to do. How could Illya take care of himself right now? How could he go back to that little apartment and live on his own? Illya's hand was frozen in his, his face expressionless, and Napoleon carried on with more certainty this time, 'It's the only thing that makes sense, Illya. You're going to need help in the early days. You can't live on your own, and I've got plenty of room. I'll arrange everything while you're in the hospital. I'll hire a moving company, get everything packed up, and – '

He looked at Illya's face, at the thin press of his lips and his pale cheeks and his eyes that were hidden behind cotton pads. He couldn't read anything of what he was thinking. But then Illya said, tiredly, 'All right, Napoleon. Anything. You see to it.'

Napoleon put his other hand around Illya's too and squeezed.

'I will,' he promised. 'I'll hire some men and I'll get the whole thing organised before you're out of the Infirmary. You can come home to my place. Look, Waverly's sending me to Phoenix for a few days, but I'll get the ball rolling before I go.'

Illya stiffened at that news. 'He's sending you to Phoenix?'

'Yeah, just for a few days, to chase up the fall out from Stockholm. You know the Old Man. U.N.C.L.E. stops for nothing,' Napoleon smiled ruefully. He shuffled the papers he had put down on the side table. 'I brought the briefing down. I thought we could go over it together. But I'm pressed for time, Illya. I need to get over to your apartment, don't I, and call some moving agencies, and – '

'You go,' Illya said. He sounded very tired. Napoleon felt tired enough, so god only knew how Illya felt. 'Do what you need to do. I don't need babysitting.'

Napoleon smiled softly. 'I'll go,' he said. 'I'll call later to see how you're doing. Try to get some sleep. Get readjusted to the time zone.'

'It's hard when everything's dark,' Illya said. It was obvious to Napoleon that he was trying to draw on a little humour, but he failed miserably.

'I know, IK,' Napoleon said gently, squeezing his hand. 'I know.'

((O))

He stood in Illya's apartment just looking about himself, wondering what on earth he had got himself into. This was going to be a much bigger job than he had thought when he first impulsively said those words, and he couldn't supervise it because he wouldn't be here. The most important thing was to make Illya's bedroom his own. He took his camera in there with that thought in mind and took photographs from every angle. Then the doorbell rang and he went quickly to answer it. That must be the man from the moving company that the girls in Communications had looked up for him. It was good of him to come so soon. Napoleon had to be on a plane in four hours.

'Ah, hi,' he greeted the man, ushering him in. 'Sol Jones? Napoleon Solo.'

'I hear it's a bit of a specialist job?' the man asked as he stepped into Illya's little apartment and looked around appraisingly. He had a flat English accent and didn't look like a sturdy moving man, but then Napoleon supposed he got other people to do the grunt work.

'Yeah, it is a bit,' Napoleon smiled. 'My friend – well, he met with an accident last week. He's lost his sight.'

'Oh...' The man was instantly sympathetic. 'Oh, well, gosh, that's terrible, Mr Solo. So – am I right that you're moving him in with you?'

'Yeah, I'm moving him into my place,' Napoleon nodded. It was such a relief that this guy had been pulled up by the girls at headquarters, because that meant he was U.N.C.L.E. ratified and would be used to the extra sensitivities of dealing with agents' possessions. 'Now, I have to go out of town in a few hours and I'll be away for a few days, but maybe you can get started at this end. I need to work out where to put everything, but I want his bedroom to be a replica of how it is here. You understand that? I want him to walk into the room and it not have a hair out of place from what he's used to. I've got a study that's about the same size and shape. I've taken pictures of his bedroom and I'll get them developed and sent on to you asap. I want that bedroom replicated in my study.'

'Of course, Mr Solo. I understand,' the man nodded immediately. He looked around the room again, eyeing things up professionally, it seemed. 'Will you have room for all his other things in your place?'

Napoleon sighed. 'I've got space but not enough for everything. Some of his things can go in storage until we work out what to do with it. But I want all his books and journals and records moved. Can you get some joiners in, get them to put up some shelves in my place, and – '

He shook his head. He was so unutterably exhausted he wasn't sure how he was holding it together any more.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm just back from Europe and I need to be on a plane again in a few hours...'

'I'll tell you what, Mr Solo,' Mr Jones said kindly. 'I have some coloured stickers with me. You put a blue sticker on any item of furniture you think can go in storage. Put a red sticker on anything that you want moved to your place. While you're away we'll document everything and pack it into boxes and get the larger items of furniture moved. We'll get those shelves made. When you come back we can bring round the boxes of smaller items and get them integrated into your apartment under your eye. Does that sound like a plan?'

Napoleon smiled. 'It sounds like a plan,' he said. 'I don't have much time, so let's get moving.'


	4. Chapter 4

The work in Phoenix led Napoleon to believe even more strongly that Waverly had got him out of town on a very thin pretence, to keep Illya in the Infirmary and give Napoleon some time to rest. It wasn't time consuming. It just required that an experienced agent was on the ground a few hours a day for a few days, directing other agents who were following up the leads gained in Stockholm, who could have received his information and directions through communicator just as easily as in person. Napoleon spent most of his time in the hotel that U.N.C.L.E. had paid for, lounging in his room or drinking in the bar, and then calling Illya up on his communicator every evening to check how he was.

Whatever Waverly's intentions were, he wished he were back in New York. Illya sounded so flat through the communicator. If he had been back in Manhattan perhaps Illya would be home by now. But he was also spending time talking with the moving firm on the phone while he was away, and he knew the apartment wasn't ready for Illya yet. The priority was on getting his bedroom done, and on fitting the new shelves for his books and records, and that wasn't yet finished. So Napoleon bided his time, trying to appreciate the blessing of a period of calm and relaxation in the knowledge of the storm that was to follow.

When he did get back he suddenly felt so unprepared. The thought of the future filled him with dread. While Illya had been in hospital the whole thing had been terrible and strange, but somehow manageable. It didn't feel like a permanent situation. It didn't feel as though this would be the start of the rest of his life. As soon as Illya's small case was packed and he was dressed and they were walking out of the Infirmary it seemed so different.

He drove Illya back in his car, and he could see that the same thoughts were churning in his friend's mind. He seemed particularly introverted, dwelling on dark things that he wasn't confiding to anyone.

'It'll be better once you're home,' Napoleon was saying as he turned into his street. He was watching the traffic carefully, wondering whether to try to park on the street or in the parking garage that was sunk under the building, wondering which would be easier for Illya. There was so much to think of.

'Hmm,' Illya said, but it was obvious he wasn't really listening.

Napoleon spotted a space very near the front entrance, and swooped into it.

'There,' he said. 'I'll leave your case in the car for now, unless there's anything you desperately want in it...'

Illya jerked his head around. 'What? Oh, are we there?'

'We're here,' Napoleon told him. 'Wait there. Let me come round and get the door.'

'I can get my own door,' Illya growled, and Napoleon protested, 'But Illya, you're on the street side. Please, wait – '

He was really afraid that Illya was just going to open the door straight into traffic, but he waited until Napoleon came round and opened the door, and when he got out he stood there and waited for Napoleon to take his arm to guide him around the car and up onto the pavement and over to the stoop that led to the front door.

'Okay,' Napoleon said. 'Steps now, yes? Here. Here's the rail.'

He put Illya's hand to the rail, and hovered as Illya climbed the steps, then darted ahead to open the door and then lead him inside.

'Come on,' he said. 'Over to the elevator. We'll soon be home.'

Illya stiffened a little when Napoleon touched his arm again. 'I'm all _right_ ,' he said snappishly. 'I can manage. I have been to your apartment before, Napoleon.'

Napoleon hesitated for a moment, but then he let his hand settle more firmly on Illya's arm. There was something in the way Illya had said _your apartment_. Perhaps it would be better to stop calling it _home_. He stepped back a little, but in trying to give Illya space he let him knock into the side of the opening elevator door, and the Russian grew very dour and silent during the ride up to the right floor. He seemed brittle as glass.

'Okay, that's it. Step out,' Napoleon said, and Illya walked out of the lift, stepping slowly, carefully, holding out a hand. Napoleon glanced down the hallway and saw that his door was open. Someone was carrying a box in through the door. He sighed. He'd hoped the men would be on lunch by now.

'The movers are still here,' he told Illya. 'Come on in through the door, now. Now, be careful. There are boxes everywhere.'

He couldn't hide the dismay in his voice. The boxes were in orderly stacks, but they _were_ everywhere. His usually immaculate living room was chaos. There was a man in there carefully putting Illya's books up onto the new bookshelves, and another came in behind them with another box and said, 'Oh, Mr Solo. Didn't expect you so soon. Where shall I put this? It says – umm – ' He turned the box to look at the writing scrawled on the side, and continued, 'Yeah, er, _Russian books, miscellaneous._ Up on those new shelves, yes? We've just brought up all the French books. Your friend's a bit of a linguist, isn't he?'

There was a thud from beside Napoleon, and he whirled. For a moment he thought Illya had fainted, but he saw he had just dropped to his knees, banging down onto the carpeted floor. His hands were splayed on the carpet, pressing into its pile, and he started to sob. His head hung down, and his shoulders jerked, and the desperate sound filled the room.

'Say, is there anything I can – ' the moving man began.

Napoleon stared at him for a moment, and back at Illya, aghast at this sudden collapse. He shook his head. He looked over towards the door and said, 'Uh – If you can give us – Look, why don't you take a break, huh?' He got out his wallet, pulled out a small sheaf of bills, and thrust them into the man's hand. 'Take a break, won't you? Go for lunch.'

He waited until the apartment was empty, and then he carefully closed and locked the door. He knelt down on the carpet in front of his sobbing partner and put his arms around him and just held him. Illya shook against him, his sobs retching out wetly at first, and then at last rather quieter, dry and hoarse.

'Better?' Napoleon asked finally, but Illya said, 'No.'

Napoleon helped him to stand up and he swayed on his feet.

'Come on, buddy,' Napoleon said. 'You're exhausted. Come into your room.'

He hadn't yet been in Illya's finished bedroom, but when he led his partner, staggering, into the room he was warmed by how perfectly it replicated Illya's room in his old apartment. This room was a very little longer and wider, but everything was where it should be, even down to the bookshelves on the walls and the placement of the little alarm clock and light on the bedside table. The movers had done a wonderful job.

'Come on, Illya,' he said. 'This is your room. We're in your bedroom, okay? It's just the same as it was in your apartment. Everything's in the same place so you know where to find things.'

'You – you copied my room?' Illya's voice was thick with tiredness.

'Every detail,' Napoleon promised. 'This is _your_ room, Illya. I want you to know that. We share the apartment, but this is your room for you to do what you like with. I wanted you to be able to come home to something familiar.'

'Oh,' Illya said, but he smiled just a very little.

'Lie down,' Napoleon said. 'You're tired. Try to sleep a little.'

Illya didn't even protest. Napoleon helped him down onto the crisply made bed and plumped the pillow a little under his head and took off his shoes and pulled a blanket over him. He sat there holding his hand and stroking his hair until finally Illya fell into exhausted sleep.

He crept out of the room at last and sank down into one of his armchairs, wondering what the hell he had got himself into. How was he going to do this? How could he bring Illya through this? He sat there for a few minutes, just feeling numb, staring at the boxes. Then he pushed himself up and continued the job the moving men had started, carefully arranging Illya's books on the shelves that now covered the back wall. It felt like a labour of love, but it didn't escape him every time he pushed a book home that Illya would never be able to read those pages.

((O))

Illya could hear voices in the outside room when he woke. He lay there with his head limp on the pillow, just letting those voices drift past his ears, not trying to hear what was being said. It was strange what sightlessness did. The wall was more like a veil, something that muffled sound but wasn't really there. The shapes and enclosure of rooms had lost all meaning. He didn't try to listen to what was being said out there. He couldn't seem to care about anything except the terrible, all-consuming reality that he couldn't see.

While the pads and bandages were about his face everything was almost totally dark, but it was worse when the doctors or nurses unwrapped the bandages, because it was then that reality set in. There was always a tiny, unbidden hope that when the pads were removed he would be able to see; maybe not perfectly, but _something_ , even the tiniest improvement. But there was nothing. There was never anything. There had been a change as his eyes healed, but not a positive one. At first every time his eyes had been sealed closed with gunk and had to be cleaned until they opened. The haze had been tinted pink and yellowish. Now that had cleared to something that was largely a featureless greyish white blur. He could tell the direction of light, but only very vaguely. When something passed in front of his face the light flickered, but what use was a flicker? What use was anything?

He pressed the side of his face against the pillow and pulled the blanket up over his head. The voices kept on in the other room. He could hear Napoleon, and strangers. They must be the movers. He could barely remember agreeing to this scheme, but he knew he had. And really, it was for the best. He was sure it was the best. He could barely even eat a plate of food without spilling it, so how could he manage anything else? But he felt a curious little ache in his middle when he thought about his little apartment. He liked that place. He liked his solitude, the independence of being whatever he wanted between those walls, of being able to curl on the sofa listening to jazz, or play his instruments for no one but himself, or slouch in bed with a book or a journal and a tumbler of scotch.

But everything he owned had been moved out, moved over here. His place would be standing empty. He would never go back there, never smell the scent of the carpeted floors or watch the pale golden light of dawn stretching down the street outside. Nothing would ever be the same again.

He couldn't cry again. He just couldn't. He was sick to death of crying, but he couldn't seem to stop. He pressed his hands hard over his face and bit a thumb into his mouth and tried furiously to quench that deep, lurching need to weep. He had to stop crying.

He pushed the blankets back off himself, and pressed a hand against the pads on his eyes. They still hurt. They hurt all the time, burning and itching. He was probably due for another painkiller but he wasn't sure where they were, and how could he look for them?

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, determined to stop this awful spinning vortex of depression. He couldn't keep on like that. So he stood up and felt over his clothes, smoothing out wrinkles. He had gone to sleep in shirt and trousers.

He felt paralysed by the darkness all around him. He pressed the back of his legs against the side of his bed, and then he felt for where the little bedside table should be. There it was. There was his bedside light, utterly useless. There was his little alarm clock that he couldn't use. They were just where they would be at home. As he felt about the room he found everything was just where he would expect it to be. It was so thoughtful of Napoleon to arrange that, to go to all the trouble and expense. But what about the door? He _wasn't_ in his actual bedroom. This was Napoleon's apartment, and he didn't know what room had been turned into his own. The study seemed most likely, but he couldn't bring it perfectly to mind, and he had to search for the door.

He found it. It wasn't too far different from his real room. So he opened the door and stepped out tentatively into the living room. The carpet felt just the same under his feet as in the bedroom, but the noise of voices was louder – and then they stopped, and someone was moving, and then Napoleon said, 'Oh, Illya! Sleep well? Look, there are boxes everywhere, so just – uh – ' Then Napoleon was holding his arm, saying, 'Come over here. Come sit down. We're trying to get your boxes sorted out. Maybe you can help.'

'Help?' Illya asked. He sat where he was taken, on a low, firm seat that must be the sofa because he could only feel an arm on one side of him. 'How – ?'

He was so useless. He couldn't do anything.

'Well, we need to decide what to keep and what to put in storage. I mean, all your kitchen things for a start…'

'Oh, I – ' He couldn't think. What did it matter about his pots and pans and crockery? 'Oh, well your kitchen has everything you need, doesn't it? Just – I don't care. I don't care what you do with my things.'

Napoleon sat down next to him, close, intimate, despite the moving men in the room.

'Well, Illya, what about your samovar?' he asked. 'You'll want that. And your teapots. And do you have a favourite mug? A glass? Flatware?'

'Well if you already know what I want to keep I'm sure you can manage it without my help,' Illya said irritably.

'Illya,' Napoleon said warningly. 'You've got a right to be cranky, but I'm trying to help you here.'

Illya rubbed his hands over his face, over those pads and bandages.

'What time is it?' he asked. He had no idea how long he had slept.

'It's – uh – almost five. Look, fellas,' he said, his voice turning away from Illya now. 'Why don't you knock off for the day?'

'Er, yeah,' one of those masculine voices replied from somewhere high up, as if perhaps he were up a ladder. 'Yeah, we should be able to finish it tomorrow. There's not much more to do.'

'Great,' Napoleon said. 'That's great.'

The sofa shifted as he stood. Illya sat and listened to the noises of the men leaving, and then Napoleon came back to him and patted him lightly on the shoulder.

'Come on, get up,' he said.

Illya lifted his head. 'Huh?'

'You haven't had any fresh air in over a week. Come on.'

'Napoleon, I walked from headquarters to the car, and from the car in here,' Illya objected. His heart was suddenly beating a little faster. He didn't know what Napoleon intended but he didn't want to go out. He didn't want to go anywhere.

'Yeah, that's not the same. Now, come on,' Napoleon said, this time putting his hand under Illya's arm and making him stand up. 'Out on the balcony. Get some air in your lungs.'

 _Oh. The balcony…_ Relief washed through him.

'It's cold out there,' Napoleon was saying, 'but it's nice. There's no snow. It's a bright, clear day.'

But what did bright, clear days mean to him? He let Napoleon put his coat around his shoulders and he pushed his arms into the sleeves and he followed Napoleon out onto the balcony, but what difference was there really from being in the apartment?

He stood there uselessly, just listening. Something clanged and clanked on the river. Gulls cried. He could hear traffic noise and occasionally a shout or a whistle. He pressed his hands onto the metal rail around the edge of the balcony, feeling the hard cold against his palms, and everything was so distant, so far away. There was just cold air on his cheeks, and dark, and he didn't know where anything was, where to turn, how to step without stumbling.

'Illya, how can I help you?' Napoleon asked quietly from beside him.

Illya shook his head. How could anyone help him? He was beyond help. He felt as if he were grieving for a death, but it was part of himself that had died. Part of himself had fallen into a void and he would never get it back. He had lost so much so suddenly and he just didn't know what to do. There was nothing anyone could say or do.

'Can I get you a drink?' Napoleon asked. 'Coffee? Alcohol? Coffee with alcohol?'

Illya snorted at that. Somehow Napoleon could always bring a little light into his dark, and he didn't know how. He hadn't said anything funny. It hadn't been a joke. But Napoleon's tone reached through and made things just a little better. Maybe it was the thought that this could be fixed by coffee or alcohol that was a joke. Maybe he shouldn't question anything that jerked him for a moment out of this terrible place.

'Hey,' Napoleon said, and then he was hugging him, very gently, very firmly, holding him so tightly on that cold balcony and rocking him a little and pressing a hand against the back of his head. Then he let go and said, 'Come on back inside. Come into the kitchen with me. It's less crazy in there. No boxes.'

Illya almost said, _Nothing to fall over_ , but he couldn't make the words come out. He followed Napoleon back into the warmth of the apartment and listened to him close the balcony doors. He let Napoleon hold his arm and steer him between the boxes and into the kitchen, and then he sat at the small kitchen table and smelt the rich coffee grounds and listened to Napoleon doing things with the percolator. He felt so isolated. So lost.

'What am I going to do?' he asked suddenly, plaintively, without meaning to speak at all. The plea just fell from his mouth. Napoleon stopped whatever he was doing and came across the room. A chair scraped as he sat down, and then he was very quiet, but he put his hands over Illya's on the table and held them warmly and firmly.

'I don't know,' he said eventually. 'I don't know, Illya. They – er – they gave me some literature in the Infirmary.'

Illya lifted his head. 'Literature? Jane Eyre? Samson Agonistes?'

Napoleon laughed a very little. 'No. A couple of leaflets, a little volume about blindness. I was going to read through them tonight. There might be some things in there that will help you.'

'Will they make my eyes work?' Illya asked dully.

'No,' Napoleon replied softly, 'but there will be things to make it better.'

That awful feeling welled in his chest again and he used anger to push it away.

'How can _anything_ make it better?'

Napoleon's hands squeezed over his. 'Illya, I know you're angry and afraid and that you're grieving for what you've lost,' he said. 'I understand that. But let me help you make it better. Let me help you adapt.'

'I don't _want_ to adapt!' Illya spat, the fury suddenly overwhelming. He tore his hands from Napoleon's, stood up, then just stood there because he was blind and he didn't know where to go. He wanted to scream. 'I don't _want_ to adapt,' he repeated, his voice shaking now. 'I want to _see._ '

'But you _won't_ see. You _can't_ see,' Napoleon said very gently. He was standing too now.

Illya dropped back into his chair, dropped his forehead onto his arms on the table. Napoleon came around and stroked his back, and Illya tried not to cry.

'All right,' he said eventually. 'All right.' He lifted his head again. He hadn't cried. 'Read the literature. Help me, Napoleon. Please.'

Napoleon patted him gently on the shoulder, then went to the spluttering percolator and poured the coffee. He brought Illya his cup and put it to his hand.

'I will help you get through this,' he promised. 'First we'll get through today, then we'll get through tomorrow, and then the day after. A day at a time. I know everything's changed. I know it's awful. But we'll keep taking it a day at a time, okay? A minute at a time if we have to. Drink your coffee, and then we'll think about dinner, and when we've had dinner we can face the evening. You don't even have to think about tomorrow until it comes.'

Illya sighed, trying to breathe out all of that anger, all of that urge to sob. He took a mouthful of coffee. It was good. Napoleon's coffee was always good, strong and rich with cream.

'Get one of those boxes,' he said. 'The kitchen boxes. Yes, I want the samovar, and the big brown teapot. Yes, I have a favourite mug. The cutlery, the dinner plates and so on, I couldn't care less about. But I brought the teapot from Cambridge and I bought – ' He heaved in a deep breath. He felt so tired, ridiculously tired considering he'd just slept. 'I bought the samovar here not long after I'd moved here, and I like to have my tea in the white china cup with the jazzy pattern and my coffee in the deep green mug with the lighter patterns on it.'

Napoleon pressed a hand over his and then his chair scraped as he stood.

'Okay, I'll bring the kitchen boxes in. You need to decide whether to put the stuff you don't want in storage or just get rid. Actually – ' He pressed his hands on Illya's shoulders as he passed behind him. 'No, it's not fair to ask you to make those decisions right now. They can go in storage until you're up to making proper decisions.'

Illya sipped his coffee as Napoleon left the room. He supposed he was right. He was a long way from being able to make proper decisions. He could hardly think about anything. Everything was such an awful jumble in his mind, and all overlain with grief and anger and fear and the monumental fact that his eyes no longer worked.

He folded his hands over the top of his mug and briefly rested his forehead on them. Moist heat from the coffee rose around him. He was fighting the need to cry again. He had to fight. He was tired but he had to fight.

Napoleon came into the kitchen and Illya jerked his head up off his hands. The table juddered as Napoleon put down a heavy box.

'Okay, _tovarisch_?' he asked.

'Yeah,' Illya said. 'I could do with a painkiller though. _'_

'I'll get you one,' Napoleon said immediately. 'And then the box. It says, _kitchen miscellaneous_. It could contain anything.'

So Illya took the painkiller that Napoleon fetched for him, and then sat as Napoleon unpacked his life, clinking and clattering, onto the table, and he decided what to let go.


	5. Chapter 5

The blankets were warm over him, even though the air was cooling now. The heating was cooling down, pipes creaking, something making a soft ticking sound as it contracted. There had been noises like this in his own apartment, but these weren't his noises. Nothing was quite the same. He was lying in a replica of his bedroom, but it wasn't quite the same. This was his bed, these were his blankets, his pillows. But there was a scent… The scent of the bed was right, but the scent of the room wasn't. It was like stepping through the mirror into another world. Nothing was right at all.

He lay flat in his bed like a laid out corpse. If he had been able to see he would be staring at the ceiling. He felt a ridiculous welling of grief for not being able to see ceilings. He had never seen the ceiling in the Stockholm hospital, not seen it in the U.N.C.L.E. Infirmary, and this ceiling was just as out of reach, the light just as useless. Everything was useless, he was useless. He was trapped and lost in this world he hadn't asked for. He had been sent home from the Infirmary and he was supposed to go on with his life. How could he do anything? How could he move on?

He turned his head, heavy with misery. He lay there a little longer, feeling the dull burning throb in his eyes and the skin around. He touched his hand to the bandages, palpated over his eyes, tried to believe that underneath his eyes were still useless, that the next time the doctor unwrapped them there would still be that white-grey haze. Of course it would still be there. They had told him there wasn't going to be any improvement, that his eyes were scarred, that the lenses would never be clear again. But every time they unwrapped those bandages he had that terrible leap of hope, and every time it crashed down as the light hit his eyes.

There was a pressure in his bladder and he tried to ignore it. He didn't want to move. If only he could just lie still until he turned into stone. But in the end he shuffled out of bed and felt his way to the bedroom door. He stood there for a moment trying to orient himself and remember the way to the bathroom. Then he started out across the floor, one hand held out. A floorboard creaked under the carpet, and Napoleon called from his room, 'Illya?'

'I'm going to the bathroom,' he replied, and willed Napoleon not to offer help. He didn't want help.

'Okay,' Napoleon said sleepily after a long pause. 'Shout if you need me.'

'All right,' Illya said, but he didn't need Napoleon.

He found the bathroom and used the toilet, and then made his way back to bed. He smoothed his hands over the blankets before he lay down. How strange this was… He reached out for the bookshelves which should be higher up on the wall above his bed, if this were just like his old room. There they were, there were the spines of his books, some of them with pieces of paper used as bookmarks sticking out of the pages. He had a habit of writing down notes on scraps of paper and then leaving them in his books. And there they all were, upright on his shelves, unreadable and useless.

He lay down again heavily, pulled the blankets up to his chin, stared into the darkness. He was restless, so full of jittering feelings that he could barely identify. This was all so strange, so strange. Where would he go from here? How could he ever live?

Normally he would pick up a book or a journal to soothe himself into sleep. He clenched his hands. How could he go through life not even being able to read? He tried to let his mind drift instead, but it drifted to all the wrong places. He felt so tired but so on edge, so tangled up with terrible feelings. The whole future loomed over him as a formless, threatening mass.

He exhaled, tried to relax, tried to settle. What was it Napoleon sometimes suggested? Counting sheep? He didn't know much about sheep. He thought of stars instead, and tried to name as many as he could, trying to remember their magnitudes and their distance from earth. They glittered brightly in his memory, and he named star after star after star, thinking of the origins of their names, their constellations, the myths surrounding them...

 _The corridors were so bright, hyper-real, long and dazzling. Through the window he saw stars burning bright and cold, but the constellations didn't make sense. He had lost Napoleon. He had lost his way. He tried to make his communicator work but his hands fumbled, he couldn't assemble it, he couldn't see. The communicator was hard and cold in his hands and his fingers wouldn't work properly. There was a mist coming in, covering everything._

 _He found a telephone on the wall and pushed coins into the slot but he couldn't dial. His fingers kept slipping from the dial. The coins fell straight through into the returns tray and he tried to push them in again but they kept clattering, falling out, falling through._

 _He turned and turned in desperation, searching for a way to go. He saw a door, a door with a rectangular window in it and light shining through, and he was afraid. He held his gun but his gun was so heavy, and he opened the door, and there was a man standing there raising a beaker, throwing the contents in a glittering arc at his face, and he screamed and screamed and –_

((O))

Napoleon was jerked out of sleep by the stark sound of terror. It was an awful noise, the noise of a man out of control, consumed with fear. It was a sound one almost never heard in waking life.

 _Illya!_

He had scrambled out of his bed before he was properly awake, and was running into Illya's room, hitting the light switch, banging the door behind him without even thinking about what he was doing. Illya was sitting up in his bed, screaming, flailing, his mouth wide with terror.

Napoleon stopped still a little way from him, because Illya was a formidable hand to hand opponent.

'Illya, wake up,' he snapped. 'Wake up. It's a dream.'

Illya's voice was panicked and uncontrolled. 'I can't see. I can't see!'

'Illya, wake up!'

His head moved blindly. He reached out an arm. There was a sob in his voice as he asked, 'Napoleon?'

'Are you awake?' Napoleon asked cautiously, and Illya said, 'Yes.'

He was trembling, his pyjama top damp with sweat, his cheeks flushed. Napoleon came over to him quickly now he was sure he was awake and sat down on the edge of the bed.

'Nightmare?' he asked.

'Yes,' Illya said tightly. 'Yes, I was – We were in that lab again. I – '

He stopped talking, his lips a thin, tight line. Napoleon picked up the glass of water from the bedside table.

'Hey, have a little water,' he said, putting the glass to Illya's hand.

'Thanks,' he said, taking a sip then carefully feeling the surface of the table before putting it back. His fingertips touched the alarm clock, and he asked, 'What time is it?'

'Er, a little after three,' Napoleon said, looking at the clock face.

'I'm sorry,' Illya said.

'Don't be silly. I'm not surprised you're having nightmares. Did you have them in the Infirmary?'

Illya smiled ruefully. 'A few times. They gave me sleeping pills, but I hate sleeping pills.'

'Yeah, I don't blame you,' Napoleon murmured. Sleeping pills always made him feel like he was drowning in drowsiness but left him with the sensation that he hadn't slept properly at all. 'Can I get you anything, Illya? Can I fix you a drink?'

Illya lay back tiredly on his pillows. 'Maybe I could do with another painkiller. My eyes burn.' He lifted a hand towards his face, then let it drop again. 'I wish I could – '

He trailed off, but his hand flexed as if he wanted to rip off the bandages and then scrape away the damage underneath them. Napoleon saw that awful expression of despair creeping onto his partner's face again. He didn't know what to do with that look. He didn't know what to do at all. He had faced so many things with Illya; faced homicidal Thrush maniacs, capture, torture, imprisonment. They had got through them all, but he didn't know how to fight this thing. He just wanted to help, to make it better, and there was nothing he could do. He had read that literature the Infirmary had given him, read about ways of guiding Illya, ways of helping him when he ate, read about the emotional rollercoaster he would be on right now. It felt like too much. It was just too much. He wasn't qualified to help someone through such a terrible, momentous life change. He felt as though he were on the outside of a glass window, looking in, and he was powerless to actually get into Illya's mind and help him out of this terrible place.

'I'll get you that painkiller,' he said, because he just didn't know what to say, because getting the painkiller would allow him to leave the room for a moment, allow him to run away from this awful situation that he was powerless to fix.

((O))

Napoleon woke to quiet and warmth. The heating was pushing out the morning chill and there was the pale, ethereal blue in the light that came from settled snow. He lay there under the covers for a little while, his brain not really awake, knowing he didn't need to go to work today but not quite remembering why. His thoughts drifted through a projected day. Maybe he'd have a light breakfast then lunch out. Maybe he'd look out for a pretty young girl to invite to join him at his table, buy a bottle of wine, get talking, and see where things went from there.

 _Illya._

He woke fully in an instant. Illya. Illya was in the other room, the room that used to be his study, that used to be a quiet retreat for solitary thought. Illya, who he had pledged to take care of, who he had brought into his apartment like a wounded bird...

He didn't regret it. There was a moment of regret for his little study, but he didn't regret telling Illya to come and live with him, that he would look after him. No. He felt the burden of the task heavily, but he didn't regret it. Illya was his partner, his friend. They had saved each other a hundred times. They had roomed together before when an injury was bad enough that one of them needed extra help. It was what one did for a partner. It was what one did for a friend.

But it was going to be hard. He had no illusions about that. Illya was in a pit of hell, and it was going to be very hard.

He sighed and glanced at the clock and pushed back the covers. He remembered then how Illya had been awake late, going to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and then how he had woken screaming from a nightmare. Sleep had pushed that momentarily out of his memory. It was awful to see Illya like that, naked and raw, still in the grip of the dream.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes and went to the door of his bedroom, then tiptoed down the hall to peek into Illya's room. It was hard to tell if he were asleep with the bandages over his eyes, but he looked asleep. He was huddled on one side, his body relaxed and his breathing soft and slow.

Napoleon shut the door silently and went to shower and dress. He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge and perused the contents, then started to cook bacon and eggs, and set the percolator to making coffee. He put a couple of slices of toast in the toaster, then he slipped back into Illya's room and touched a hand to his shoulder, saying his name softly.

Illya came awake suddenly, looking bewildered. Then his mouth set in a line and he said, 'Oh. Napoleon. I forgot – '

'Time to get up, sleepyhead,' Napoleon said. 'I'm making breakfast.'

'Oh,' Illya said. Napoleon was half waiting for him to say he wasn't hungry, but he didn't. 'Oh, all right,' he said. 'I – I suppose I'll get dressed afterwards...'

'Yeah, there's no rush,' Napoleon smiled. 'You want help?'

Illya huffed out a breath and smiled a little and said, 'Yes, please,' so Napoleon took his arm when he stood and guided him into the kitchen.

'Now, would you rather have coffee or tea?' Napoleon asked as Illya sat down.

Illya turned his head towards the sound of the percolator and said rather listlessly, 'You're already making coffee. I'll have coffee. Thank you, Napoleon.'

'All right,' Napoleon said.

He left Illya at the table and went to take the toast from the toaster, spread butter on it, pour out the coffee, and pile eggs and bacon onto the plates with the toast.

'Here you are,' he said, putting Illya's food down, putting his cutlery down with a clink, then bringing his coffee over. 'Dig in.'

Illya sniffed lightly.

'What am I digging into?' he asked.

'Oh – it's eggs and bacon, Illya, with a slice of toast. Your cutlery is right by the plate and your coffee is there too.'

Napoleon sat down with his own plate and cup of coffee and began to eat, but he was watching Illya obliquely as he did. Illya felt for his cutlery and prodded at the food, and then put the fork down and picked up his coffee instead.

'Is it cold out?' he asked. 'It felt cold by the bedroom window.'

'Yeah, there's snow,' Napoleon nodded. 'Not a lot, just a dusting, but it's enough. It's below freezing out there. A good day for staying at home.'

Illya grunted a reply and picked up his fork again and jabbed it at his food. He speared a piece of bacon and brought it to his mouth and ate, but with none of the relish that Napoleon was used to him showing with food.

'I suppose it must be beautiful,' Illya said after he had swallowed. 'The snow, I mean.'

'Well, yeah,' Napoleon nodded. Illya had sounded so wistful. 'Yeah, it's always pretty before anyone goes down the street.' He sat there in silence for a few moments, the silence an awkward lump in the air, then he said, 'Illya, you know I'll always tell you what I can see, if you want to know. Whatever I'm doing, just ask me and I'll tell you what I can see.'

He wasn't even sure if Illya were listening. He was poking at the food with his fork again, and then he dropped it onto the table with a clatter and touched his fingertips to the food as if he were trying to map out the plate. Then he picked up his cutlery again and cut one of the eggs and brought a forkful upwards, but the egg fell off before it reached his mouth. He tried again, and got it into his mouth, but such an odd look passed over his face, and for a moment Napoleon was afraid he was going to be sick. Then he dropped the fork again and abruptly thrust the plate aside with a violent sweep of his arm. Plate, cup, cutlery, all smashed onto the floor, the plate and cup breaking into shards, coffee spilling everywhere.

Napoleon looked at the mess in dismay, but his attention was pulled back by a strange, animal sound coming from Illya's mouth, a sort of wild sob bursting forth from him. Napoleon forgot about the carnage on the floor in an instant, coming to Illya, crouching by him, putting his arms around him and holding him tightly as he wept. There were words in the middle of it all but he couldn't make any of them out at all. He could feel Illya's anger like something alive inside him, and he tightened his arms, trying to protect him against something that was coming from inside. He didn't know what to do or what to say. He couldn't do anything except hold him.

'All right,' Napoleon said at last, when Illya had started to become still and his sobs were quieting. 'All right, buddy. All right.'

'I can't, I can't do this,' Illya wept, and they were the first words that Napoleon had been able to understand.

'You can, I promise you,' Napoleon told him. He released Illya from his arms and held his hands instead. His thighs were aching from crouching by the chair. 'Come on,' he said softly. 'You had a bad night and you need some food in you. I'll clean this up and make you some more.'

He left another load of bacon and eggs in the pan to cook while he cleaned up the mess of food and china and dumped it into the bin. Then he put the new plate down in front of Illya and laid his cutlery either side, and put his hands briefly over Illya's. He was shaking.

'Listen, Illya,' he said. 'Let's try something they suggested in the infirmary. Imagine your plate is a clock face. Now, your toast is at twelve, you have two eggs at four, and your bacon is at eight.'

Illya turned his head away, his lips pressing together, as if the idea revolted him. But then he picked up his cutlery and started probing at his food with the tip of his knife. Napoleon smiled as he saw the lines of tension around his mouth soften a little. Perhaps it was helping. Perhaps…

He turned back to his own plate of food. Everything was cold, and his coffee was lukewarm, but it didn't matter. He watched Illya eat and finished off his own breakfast, then said, 'All right, I guess you can't have a shower with those bandages on. Do you want to bother with washing, or a bath, or just get dressed?'

'I'll just get dressed,' Illya said. He seemed calmer, but tired.

'Okay,' Napoleon nodded. 'Then I'll help you with that, and we can work out what we're going to do today. You're not due to have your eyes checked until tomorrow, so maybe we can carry on sorting out these boxes. Okay?'

'All right,' Illya nodded. 'Yes, all right.'

He was quiet as he finished the last piece of toast on his plate, then he said, 'I'm sorry, Napoleon. I'll pay for – '

'You won't pay a cent,' Napoleon said firmly. 'It was a plate and a cup, that's all. Break as many as you like. I don't want you worrying about any of that at the moment. When you're ready we'll work out some kind of financial arrangement for living together, but at the moment it just doesn't matter. Okay?'

Illya smiled, pushing his cutlery together on the plate and dusting off the front of his pyjama jacket.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' he said. 'Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for all of it.'

Napoleon smiled, putting his hand lightly on Illya's shoulder and squeezing it. 'Any time, Illya.'

He carried the plates over to the sink and put them on the worksurface, wiped the table down with a cloth, and swallowed the last of his coffee. He watched Illya just sitting on the chair there, waiting. Illya had always made him think of a young tomcat; autonomous, decisive, graceful. He looked now like he was waiting for instructions. It was going to be a hard road, he was sure, helping him to adapt to his new life. These early days might be the hardest of all.


	6. Chapter 6

It felt so different going out deliberately on foot instead of just making the short walk down from the apartment to wherever the car happened to be parked. Illya felt that he could just about deal with the temporary trips to and from the car, and he could deal with sitting in the car and closing his mind down and pretending to be asleep. Those trips were for medical appointments. They were unpleasantly necessary. But he couldn't deal with pushing himself out into the streets and trying to act as if this were normality now. How could it be normality? How could this be his life? He was still waiting for someone to tell him it had all been a mistake, that they had got the wrong person.

Napoleon was insisting, though, because he hadn't been out on foot since they got back to New York, and he kept saying the only way to adjust was to live. In some ways it seemed easier to bow to his insistence. He let Napoleon find his thick coat and his scarf and his gloves, listened to Napoleon telling him that it wasn't snowing right now, that the streets were clear and traffic was moving. Napoleon told him that the sky was pale blue and there was hardly a cloud up there, and he couldn't work out if he were feeling anger or jealousy or misery, but he wanted to hit something, to bring the sky down around him, to smash up everything within reach.

He felt awful, so awful. He hung on to Napoleon's arm and he almost slipped on ice on the stoop and when he stepped into the street and someone from the apartment building spoke to them he wanted to hide his face and turn away. But Napoleon kept on walking and he kept stepping after him, conscious that he was moving further and further away from the safety and relative familiarity of the apartment, conscious that he must look so helpless, so useless, so strange with the bandages around his head. The cold bit at his face and ears and the air was bitter with exhaust fumes, and his eyes were stinging viciously behind the bandages. He held on to Napoleon, but he felt as though he were spinning, lost, falling, the feelings building like an inflating balloon in his chest until suddenly he couldn't stand it, and he burst out, 'Please take me home, Napoleon. Take me home.'

'Illya, we've only gone two blocks,' Napoleon said, but Illya stopped still on the pavement and jerked at Napoleon's arm to make him stop too, and said, ' _Take me home._ '

He couldn't cry out here on the street. He couldn't collapse out here, cars driving past him, people walking past him on the street. He hated himself. He felt such a failure, such a terrible ruin. He tilted his head down and held on to Napoleon with both hands as he turned around and walked and walked, until Napoleon was saying, 'Okay, Illya, we're back. Steps up, okay?'

He kicked his foot against the first step, and followed Napoleon up, into the lobby, the elevator, along the corridor to the apartment door. He stood still while Napoleon deactivated the alarm, but then he let go of him and headed straight for his bedroom, got the door open, slammed it behind him, and then turned and hit his clenched fist so hard into the panels of the door that the pain jerked all the way up to his shoulder and rang in his mind.

He turned away from the door and screamed out a cry of rage and misery. He hardly heard the door open, but Napoleon was in his room, hands on his arms, and he turned to him and struck his hands away and screamed and shouted without any consciousness of what he was saying. He didn't even know what language he was speaking. He flailed out with his arms and caught at his bookshelves with his throbbing right hand, tore a book from the shelf and threw it, threw another, another. He couldn't read them. He'd never be able to read them. He tried to take a step and he stepped on a book, and he screamed and swore and threw more books, and then Napoleon's arms were around him so tightly he could hardly move, and the screaming anger turned into sobs so strong they hurt his chest.

'It's all right,' Napoleon said softly, stroking a hand on the back of his head, stroking his back. 'It's all right, Illya. It's all right.'

'It's not, it's not,' he sobbed against him, the words almost lost in his grief.

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'I know.'

He didn't know. How could he know? How was it even remotely possible that Napoleon knew at all how he felt? But he stumbled backwards as Napoleon moved him, sat down on the edge of his bed as Napoleon gently urged him to sit, and he pressed his hands over his face and cried.

Napoleon moved out of the room, was gone for a minute, then came back again and gently took his right arm by the wrist and said, 'Look, let me put this ice bag on your hand. It's going a lovely shade of purple.'

He flattened out Illya's hand first and touched his fingers and said, 'Can you bend this one? And this one? What about this one?'

'It's not broken,' Illya murmured.

His lips felt thick. It was hard to talk. Napoleon pressed the ice pack onto the back of his hand and he hissed at the cold meeting the stinging heat.

'What am I going to do with you?' Napoleon asked softly, stroking fingers lightly over his hair again, and Illya shook his head.

'I don't know what to do,' he said. 'I don't know...'

It all just seemed impossible. Living seemed impossible. He couldn't see a future. He couldn't imagine any kind of future.

He sat there with the cold from the ice drenching into his hand, listening to Napoleon picking up his books and putting them back on the shelves.

'You know, if you ever want me to read any of these to you – ' Napoleon offered, but he shook his head. He couldn't stand to think of being read to like a child. 'Not now,' Napoleon continued, 'but any time you feel like it. You're not always going to feel like this.'

He couldn't imagine not feeling like this. Not feeling dependent, helpless, lost, blind.

'It will get better,' Napoleon said. 'I promise you, it will.'

How could Napoleon know that? How could he possibly know that? How could this get better when his eyes would never heal?

'Listen, Illya, why don't we go out in the car instead?' Napoleon asked. 'A little drive, huh? Get out of the apartment for a bit. Maybe this evening we could go to a concert, yes? Wouldn't you like that?'

The anger was starting to come in ripples again, displacing the grief.

' _No_ ,' he said. 'No, I don't want to get out of the apartment for a bit. I don't want you to read to me. I don't want – '

'Hey.' Napoleon put a hand on his shoulder, stroking again. He had become a cat for Napoleon to stroke, to constantly pacify. 'Illya, I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you move on.'

How could he move on when he didn't know which way to turn, what to do, how to help himself in anything? His world was ashes and ruins. He just wanted to curl up in his bed and never wake again.

'A drink,' he said eventually, trying so hard to pull himself together just a little, to try not to be an utter ruin. 'I'd like a drink, Napoleon.'

He meant water, tea, maybe coffee, but Napoleon came back with a tumbler half full of whiskey, and he drank it and let it sink into his tissues. He shuffled himself back on the bed, leant back against the pillows, cradled the glass with his good hand and let the ice pack numb the throbbing out of the other. Napoleon topped up the glass, and he drank again.

((O))

He didn't know how long it had been now. He had lost track of the days. He had been in hospital in Stockholm for three days and then in the Infirmary for – what? Had it been a week? He wasn't sure. And he had been living in Napoleon's apartment for three days? Four days? He thought it was Wednesday or Thursday, but he couldn't be sure. He couldn't look at a calendar to work out the date any more than he could look at the clock to see the time. Napoleon had bought a chiming clock for the mantelpiece, but you couldn't get a calendar with bells.

Napoleon had been working on the boxes all morning and Illya had tried to interact. He really had. He had tried to help. But everything just reminded him of the enormity of what he had lost. When Napoleon had pulled out his running shoes he had thought how he could never go running again. When Napoleon found a rogue book or journal he thought how those books were packed with words that he couldn't read. He couldn't use his pens. His spare reading glasses were useless. He couldn't do a god damn thing but sit here on the sofa and listen to Napoleon moving about the room. Couldn't boil a kettle, couldn't cook a meal, could hardly even move around the apartment without help. He had bruises from walking into the edges of half open doors, bruises from forgetting the exact position of the coffee table, bruises from tripping and landing on the floor. It seemed that whenever he got enough confidence to move a little faster or thought he knew the space, he ended up with a bruise.

'Why don't you get some air, Illya?' Napoleon asked him suddenly out of the darkness. He was always trying to get him to go outside, but he didn't want to go outside. How could he go anywhere? He had to be led everywhere like a cripple.

He didn't have the strength to argue, though. Napoleon always ended up winning. He wouldn't go out for the walks Napoleon wanted him to take, but he would stand on the balcony.

'Okay,' he murmured, and he stood up. He knew the way to the balcony doors, at least. He shuffled across the room, wary that there might be boxes in the way, and then his fingertips bumped into the cold glass of the balcony doors. He fumbled his hands over the catch and went out into the biting air.

He felt so tired, beyond even crying. He leant on the balcony rail and he felt so heavy, as if his body were sinking down to fuse with the building that held him up. There were little sounds out there but they all came to his ears individually. That shout from down on the river. That was a little tic. The clank of something on a boat. Another tic. Nothing was connected. Nothing mattered. All those sounds came to him but it was as if they were stopped by a glass wall before they touched him. He was so heavy, so tired, he couldn't even cry. He leant out over the railing, further out, further, the feeling in his chest so heavy it was like lead pulling him over that fragile boundary. The thought of the concrete below was a siren song.

And then a hand on his collar, jerking him back, letting go, the hands coming around to grab him solidly around the chest. Napoleon saying, 'Illya, what in hell are you doing?' Napoleon's heart beating like a drum against his back as he wrestled him inside, a moment of abandonment as Napoleon let go of him to close and lock the balcony doors, and then those arms again.

'Fuck,' Napoleon said. 'Fuck, fuck.'

He shook Illya, and somehow that shaking loosened something, and he was sobbing. Napoleon held him tightly again, his hands moving, on his back, then a hand cradling the back of his head, then Napoleon pushing him away a little and pressing a hand on his cheek and kissing his forehead, then pulling him close again, tight, his arms so tight. Illya sobbed so hard it felt like vomiting while Napoleon crooned and whispered and stroked and held him so tightly.

'Illya, you weren't going to do it?' he asked at last. 'Illya, promise me you weren't going to do it.'

Illya's head was pressed against Napoleon's shoulder, his mouth against the wool of his jumper, and he said, 'I can't. I can't.'

He was shaking. He had been so close, so very close, to just letting himself overbalance and fall. Every part of him shook.

' _Illya_ ,' Napoleon said. 'Illya, you have so much to live for. You know that, don't you? You have to understand that. You have _so_ much to live for.'

'Do I?' he asked bleakly, and Napoleon said, ' _Yes_. There's me, for starters. Illya, what would I do without you?'

'Go back to work,' Illya suggested. His face was still against the wool of Napoleon's top, and it felt like such a warm, safe place to be. He could hear Napoleon's heartbeat thudding in his chest, mirroring his own. 'Go back to your life. Move on from this – from this utter, utter mess...'

' _No_ ,' Napoleon said. His arms were still so tight around Illya. They felt like a life ring. 'No, Illya. No, I've told you over and over, we're going to climb out of this. We're going to get through it. Second by second, minute by minute, day by day.'

'But I can't _see_ ,' Illya said, and the sobs were coming again. 'I can't do anything. I can't be anything. It's all – it's all – '

'It'll be all right,' Napoleon promised him. 'It will. We'll get through this.'

But there was no _we_. Napoleon was so wonderful, so caring, trying so hard to help. But he couldn't step into the other side of this darkness. Napoleon could still see. He hadn't lost anything. Illya still felt as though he were all alone.

Napoleon's arms were around him like a parent hugging a child. The wool of his jumper was wet under Illya's face. The tears were seeping out under the pads that covered his eyes, and his eyes hurt again, throbbed. The inside of his eyelids felt as though they were being abraded with hot sand. The feeling made his stomach lurch. And then Napoleon ruffled the hair at the back of his head and gently pulled away, and said, 'I think it's time for a painkiller, yes?'

'Yes, I suppose so,' he said.

When Napoleon came back he brought a painkiller, but he also brought the scent of alcohol; the piercing scent of whiskey. He put a tumbler to Illya's hand and closed his own hands over Illya's to stop the shaking. Illya swallowed the drink in two mouthfuls.

'Hey, you're not supposed to down it that fast,' Napoleon said, his voice amused but laced with concern.

'Oh,' Illya murmured, but Napoleon filled his glass again and he drank again, and felt his heart beat start to slow, the shaking starting to subside.

'Now, let me see to those dressings,' Napoleon said in his kindest, most maternal voice.

Napoleon was so caring. It was good that Napoleon was so caring. Illya sat there mutely while Napoleon peeled the pads away from his eyes and gently swabbed tears and gunk away, but he blinked into the dazzling white blur and the unbearable ache of grief filled his chest again. It was real. It was so terribly real. He could feel Napoleon's hands on his face and hear the small noises he made, but there was nothing else. Just the seat beneath him and the scent of whiskey, and nothing else. The world had fallen away and he was left alone, lost in an empty fog. He didn't know how to get through the next minutes, the next hours, the next days. He sat and let Napoleon tend to him, and the tears slipped down his cheeks again.

((O))

Napoleon had no idea how he was supposed to deal with this, how he was supposed to support Illya through this terrible time. It had seemed so simple back in the infirmary to suggest that Illya move in with him, but he just didn't know what to do. Illya had been so close to doing something terrible on that balcony. He had been so close...

It was such a relief when Illya decided he was exhausted, and went to lie down in his room. Napoleon felt terrible for feeling that, but it was true. He felt as though he could breathe again.

He waited a little while, sitting on the sofa in silence, just looking numbly around at his living room, which was so changed now Illya was a permanent resident. There were a few extra items of furniture, meaning everything else had been rearranged. There were bits and pieces of Illya's; a couple of ornaments, his coat on the coat hooks, his favourite mug on the table. There were his books everywhere, and his record collection stacked in front of Napoleon's, waiting to be integrated. So many things. He had to think about those things all the time. He had to remember to keep things in their place, he had to help Illya learn where everything was. So many things...

He sighed, stood up, went to peek in through Illya's door. He was lying fully clothed on top of the bed covers, fast asleep. He looked pale and small lying there like that, and Napoleon felt a spear of affection piercing his chest. He felt like he loved the very bones of his friend. It took him by surprise, how strong that emotion was. It felt like falling.

He closed the door softly and went to the telephone, glad it was a good way away from Illya's room, in case he woke up. He sat there with the receiver in his hand for a moment, then he touched his index finger into the dial, and started to dial a number.

The phone at the other end trilled a few times, and then the voice answered.

'Hi, mom. It's Napoleon,' he said, resting back into his armchair and taking a mouthful of his drink.

'Napoleon! Good lord, do you know how long it is since you last called?'

Napoleon rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. Her voice was censorious, but it was so good to hear.

'Yeah, I know, mom. I'm sorry. It's been a long month...'

'What is it?' his mother asked, immediately concerned. 'If you're allowed to talk about it? Napoleon, are you all right?'

'I'm fine, mom,' he assured her quickly. 'Fine. Just tired. Mom, you remember Illya, don't you?'

'Illya?' she asked. 'Your cute little Russian?'

That made Napoleon smile. 'Yes, my cute little Russian,' he nodded, thinking of Illya curled asleep in his bedroom like a little blond cat.

'Of course I remember Illya, dear. How is he?'

He sighed then. It felt so hard to say. 'He's – Well, he's not so good. He met with an accident a few weeks back. He's blind.'

He heard his mother's intake of breath through the receiver.

'Is he all right? Is it permanent? Good god, Napoleon, how's he managing?' his mother asked in concern.

'It's permanent. No. He's not all right. Not really.'

 _He's not all right at all_ , he thought. _Nowhere near all right._

His mother's voice sounded very far away. 'Good lord, Napoleon, how terrible for him. He's all alone in this country, isn't he?'

'Well, he has me,' Napoleon said. He felt so tired, but it was good to say that, to say that of all the people in this country, he was the one Illya turned to. 'He's living with me. When it happened I told him he was moving in with me.'

'Napoleon, isn't that an awful lot?' his mother worried. 'I mean, taking care of someone who's suddenly blind. Isn't it – ?'

It was an awful lot. It was such a lot. He felt heavy with the burden of Illya, of his practical needs, of his emotional turmoil. It was so hard. But he wanted to do it. Speaking to his mother made him realise that he wanted so much to be the one to help Illya through this. He couldn't bear the thought of him having to rely on a stranger or be alone through this.

'It's not so much,' he said. 'It's all right. He's adapting, slowly.'

That was true. No matter how darkly Illya regarded his situation, he was adapting. He had started to do such simple little things, things Napoleon took for granted but which at first Illya had such trouble with. He could shave without help now. He was learning the placement of all the furniture in the apartment, even if he did still sometimes knock into things as he moved around. He could walk easily enough from his bedroom to the sofa in the living room, to the bathroom, to his chair in the kitchen. He was gaining the confidence to dress himself without having to call Napoleon in every time to see that things weren't inside out or the wrong way round. He was slowly crawling back into life.

But still, he seemed so depressed, so tangled deep within grief and anger at what had happened to him. He was adapting, but it was so hard.

'Napoleon, are you there?' his mother asked.

'Oh, yeah. Sorry,' he murmured. He had been sitting gazing at the snow falling outside the window, almost forgetting he was on the phone. 'Yes, I'm sorry, mom.'

He wanted to tell her how Illya had been on the balcony, how he had almost tipped himself over the rail to the ground below. He so desperately wanted to talk to someone about that, but he just didn't feel he could. It felt like exposing Illya in a way he wouldn't want to be exposed. But he kept seeing it as if it had happened. He had seen people fall like that before. He kept seeing it as Illya's body crumpled on the concrete, seeing Illya's blood seeping out in a dark pool.

'Napoleon, I want you to come see me,' his mother said firmly. 'You and Illya both. Come round for dinner one of these days, won't you? I'm in the apartment for the next few weeks.'

'Oh, I – ' He wasn't sure how Illya would take to that. Meal times so often consisted of Illya trying so hard to eat neatly and spiralling into darkness with each perceived failure. 'I'm not sure about dinner,' he admitted. 'Illya's still – Well, he's very self-conscious about eating in front of people.'

'Well, then, coffee,' she said. 'Are you free Thursday?'

Napoleon rubbed his thumb over his chin. 'Illya has an appointment with the ophthalmologist at one,' he said musingly.

'Then I will see you at four,' she said firmly. 'Both of you. Will he be finished by four?'

'Uh, yeah, I think he'll be finished by four,' Napoleon said. 'All right, mom. We'll come for coffee. Thank you.'

When he was finished on the phone he put the receiver back gently in its cradle, then went back to Illya's room and looked around the door. He was still fast asleep. Napoleon stood there, just looking, looking at the bandages on his face and his hands half curled up near his face, and the soft rise and fall of his chest. He had been so close to pitching himself over that rail…

There were so many things to think of that his mind seemed to whirl. Having called his mother, spoken to her in that desperate, little-boy way that he still needed sometimes, he supposed he should call the Infirmary and talk to someone about Illya's depression. That was the most important thing right now. But all the terrible mundanities of life kept crowding in. There was the appointment with the ophthalmologist, and Illya was already nervous enough about that, because the ophthalmologist had spoken about bringing someone else in to look at his eyes, just in case something could be done. Now there was this date with his mother that perhaps he shouldn't have made. There was grocery shopping to do, and he would either need to drag Illya along with him or leave him alone and at risk of harming himself in his depression. There was cleaning and sorting out Illya's possessions and taking care of Illya's wounds and doing his laundry and cooking meals. If he had been dealing with work too he thought he would have broken down. As it was there were always sundry little things that needed attending to, despite being on leave. Always the calls. 'Napoleon, could you just – ' 'Mr Solo, do you have the details of – ' 'Napoleon, can you let me know if Illya – '

But it would all have to be done, and somehow above and beneath and around all of that he needed to try to keep Illya above water, to keep him from drowning in his grief and loss.


	7. Chapter 7

'Mr Kuryakin, I told you last time I saw you that I wanted to bring in another doctor to have a look at your eyes,' Dr Atkins said, sitting on the chair facing the Russian. The pads and bandages were off for now and Napoleon could see how the burns were healing on his skin around his eyes. That skin looked pale and damp, but the damage was fading away with the application of cutting edge treatments acquired through the U.N.C.L.E. infirmary. It was only his eyes that really weren't changing. He had attended four of these appointments with Illya and the only change had been the redness fading, leaving the white opacity just as it was. His stomach turned over every time he saw his eyes like that. While they were covered with pads it was easy to believe his eyes would be just as they always had been, underneath; blue and clear and sighted. When he saw the thick whiteness it was impossible to pretend.

'Yes, I remember,' Illya said, slight suspicion in his voice.

'I've been talking with him about whether you're a suitable candidate for corneal transplant,' the doctor said carefully, and Illya stiffened.

'Uh – corneal transplant?' Napoleon asked. His stomach seemed to have flopped over at those words. 'Is that what – '

The doctor smiled and reached out to pat his arm briefly. Napoleon looked back to Illya again. He was listening so intently he looked like a dog on guard.

'It's exactly as it sounds. We remove the damaged corneas and replace them with healthy donor corneas. Now, Dr Singh is in the hospital today so I've asked him to give you a quick examination, Mr Kuryakin. I'll just step down the hall and ask him to come take a look.'

'All right,' Illya said rather faintly. His hands were gripping hard on the arms of the chair, his knuckles white.

'You okay?' Napoleon asked as the doctor left the room.

'Yes,' Illya said, turning his head to Napoleon's voice. 'Napoleon, do you think – '

'Let's wait and see what this Dr Singh says,' Napoleon replied doubtfully. He was so wary of the hope that was fluttering in his chest.

'Yes,' Illya said.

He sat very still as the ophthalmologist returned with Dr Singh, and the new doctor sat down in front of Illya and examined his eyes closely. Then he shrugged and said, 'It's overly optimistic, I think, to suggest a transplant would be successful. The sclera are very badly damaged. One couldn't possibly expect the stitches to hold. Mr Kuryakin would be at risk of losing the eyes entirely.'

Napoleon let out a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding, and he saw Illya do the same. He had held the hope for so short a time, but having it snatched away felt like falling. He watched Illya closely as the ophthalmologist spoke to Dr Singh and thanked him and then turned to replace the pads over his eyes.

'We should be able to do away with these soon, but I want your eyes to be protected for a little longer,' the doctor said. 'I'm sorry that Dr Singh couldn't offer you more positive news, Mr Kuryakin. I was hoping he might think surgery would be viable.'

Illya spoke very little except to mechanically thank the doctor and agree a time for his next appointment. He followed Napoleon out to the car and got into the passenger seat, and exhaled as if he were deflating.

'Illya, are you all right to go to mom's?' Napoleon asked cautiously.

'Yes,' Illya said. He sounded very tired. He was running his finger over the dashboard almost obsessively, following the lines of the vinyl. 'Yes, of course.'

'I'm sorry he got your hopes up,' Napoleon commented.

'Yes,' Illya said, then he shook himself a little and said, 'Well, it's a line of enquiry to follow. But you'd better get going, Napoleon. We'll be late.'

Napoleon held in a sigh and turned the key in the ignition. He wished that Illya would talk about this, but he knew what he was like. He would hold it in until he couldn't manage to any more, and then it would come out either as anger or grief. He felt as though he were driving a time bomb to his parents' place.

'You want me to tell you where we are?' he asked, because sometimes Illya liked him to keep him abreast of their progress.

'No,' Illya said. 'No, thank you. Just drive.'

'Of course, sir,' Napoleon murmured, tipping an imaginary cap as if he were a chauffeur, but the gesture was lost on Illya. Even if he had been able to see it, he seemed miles away, and he stayed miles away all the way to his parents' city apartment.

'All right, Illya, we're here,' he said as he pulled up in front of the vast building. He handed his keys out to the man who would take his car to the parking garage, and then went around to open Illya's door. 'Illya,' he said, tapping his arm, and Illya seemed to come awake. He wondered if he had actually been asleep, or just so distracted he hadn't heard Napoleon at all. 'We're here,' he said again.

'Oh. Thank you,' Illya said, sliding his foot down onto the road surface. 'It's safe to get out?'

'Yeah, you're on the kerb side.'

He watched Illya's head as he got out of the car, let him take his arm, and told him about the kerb and then about the slight step up to the door of the building. Illya relaxed a little as they got into the warmth of the lobby and walked over to the lift.

He didn't quite know what to do with his taciturn Russian once they were in his mother's apartment. Illya sipped at his coffee and ate the biscuits offered to him, but he spoke very little even when Mrs Solo was obviously trying to eke out some kind of response. Napoleon kept thinking about that awful moment on the balcony and wishing he could confide in his mother about that. He wished he could have come here alone, because coming out didn't seem to be helping Illya at all. He could have been at home, and then Napoleon could have poured his heart out. But the very reasons why he wanted to pour his heart out were the reasons he didn't want to leave Illya alone for too long right now.

Then his mother said, 'Napoleon, would you mind helping me in the kitchen for a moment? Just as you're here, I have a new dishwasher that's going to be installed Monday and the tradesmen put it right in the middle of the floor. It's awfully in the way.'

'Oh – er – sure, mom,' he said. 'Illya, do you mind?'

It was a moment before Illya replied. He was sitting on the sofa and holding his coffee without remembering to drink. But then he said, 'Oh, no, of course not. Go and help your mother.'

It crossed Napoleon's mind that Illya could help move the thing with him, but when he glanced at his mother he understood that she had something else in mind.

'Back in a few minutes,' he said, patting Illya's shoulder and getting up. He looked around automatically at the windows and the balcony doors, and tried to remember if Illya had been in this place before and would know where the doors were. As he crossed to the door into the hall he discreetly made sure the balcony doors were properly closed and locked.

'Napoleon,' his mother said as soon as the kitchen door was closed behind him. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, leaning on the counter.

He saw the box containing the dishwasher. That story at least had been true.

'Where do you want it?' he asked.

'Napoleon,' she said again, more softly. 'You've got the world on your shoulders. I saw you checking that door. Tell me about it.'

He put his shoulder to the box and started to push, huffing hard at the effort. It moved a few inches across the floor, and he stopped, just laying his hands on the thick cardboard.

'What can I say?' he asked, turning to lean on the box.

She just stood there silently, an eyebrow a little raised.

'All right,' he said. He could withstand Thrush torture, but he couldn't withstand that expression on his mother's face. 'He's in a terrible place, mom. It's – hard. A few days ago he almost threw himself off the balcony.'

' _Napoleon_ ,' she said, her voice soft with shock, and he shrugged.

'He didn't do it. I stopped him. I – don't know if he'd try anything like that again. It's just – ' He shook his head. 'It's so hard. How long is he going to be in this awful place? I feel like I have to watch him every minute...'

'Napoleon,' she said, coming over to him and gently putting her arms around him. She hugged him tightly, then let go. 'Napoleon, you remember when grandpa died, don't you?'

'Yes, of course I do, mom,' he nodded. It hadn't been so long ago.

'Napoleon, when that happened I felt as if I'd been hit around the head by something. Even knowing it was coming, I felt like that. For the first week I was dazed. I didn't know which way to turn. I felt as if I were spinning, and everywhere I looked there was a void. And the week after that I was up and down, this way and that. I thought for a little while that I might be going mad. I thought I just couldn't do it, I couldn't possibly go through something so painful and terrible.'

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'I remember. I know how hard it was for you.'

'It took me months, Napoleon. Even two, three years later I'd catch myself looking for him, wanting to tell him something, wanting his advice, missing his laugh. I still have times when I just sit down and cry.'

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'I know.'

'You know what I'm trying to say, don't you? I think you need to look at Illya as if he's experienced a sudden death. It's a kind of death in him, and it was so sudden and so violent. But it's always with him. It's torn apart and changed his entire life. He's grieving, Napoleon. That's a man experiencing grief. Just – give him space, give him love, give him help. He's got a lot to come to terms with. I hope he will come to terms with it, but give him time.'

'I know,' he said again.

He looked down at the tiles on the floor, at the reflections of the table legs and chairs. He looked up at the light coming in through the window and at his mother's face. He felt that awful, encompassing spear of pain mixed with affection again when he thought of Illya and what he had lost. He wished he could wrap him up and protect him from all this agony.

'I just don't know what he's going to do with his life now,' he said. 'I just don't – '

His mother smiled and stroked his arm. 'He'll find something,' she said confidently. 'It's very early days, Napoleon. He's an intelligent man. Maybe he won't be an agent any more but he'll find ways of coping. He'll work it out. There must be something he can do in your organisation?'

'In U.N.C.L.E.?' Napoleon asked, startled.

'Of course in U.N.C.L.E., dear. If he's anything like you, that place is his life. There must be a lot he can do without sight, I'm sure, once he gets back on his feet. Is he going to learn braille?'

'Uh, yes, I think so. I hope so. I'm trying to persuade him to enrol in a school but at the moment it's hard enough just getting him out of the apartment.'

'Let him have his grief, Napoleon,' his mother said, 'but remind him every day that he's still alive. Remind him that he's still a very vital, intelligent man. Get him into that school and get him back to work. Help him realise he's not broken. He's just changed.'

Napoleon smiled. He put his arms round his mother and hugged her.

'Thanks, mom,' he said.

He put his shoulder to the dishwasher box again, shoving it towards the side of the room over the slick tiles. He could have asked Illya to help. There was so much Illya could do. He had been coddling him, he knew, and that was no good for anyone. Illya was a man who needed purpose and direction in his life. His mother was right. He needed to remind Illya to live again.

((O))

Finally Illya was free of the last bandages, free of the pads over his eyes. He supposed he should have been happy to be free of those, and it was a relief to finally have nothing adhering to his face, but it felt so terrible too. It felt terrible to finally have those pads off and have the reminder every time he turned his head that it wasn't the bandages stopping him from seeing. No, it was his useless eyes, it was that white damaged layer of cornea that he couldn't scrape off, that would never heal. There was almost no pain now and there was nothing that could be done, nowhere to go. He wanted to throw things and scream and rage, but he felt so tired. He had no energy for screaming any more. He had started seeing a psychiatrist to try to make sense of his loss but the psychiatrist didn't know anything about blindness, knew nothing of his experience, and it felt like talking to a wall. So he ended up venting in other ways. He had spent too many evenings drinking too much. He had broken enough of Napoleon's plates, hurling them across the room in utter fury, and he almost wished at those times for Napoleon to break too, to scream back, to throw a punch. But he never did. One wasn't permitted to scream back at cripples.

He felt the press of the sofa at the back of him, the softness of the carpet under his socked feet. The air was a little chilly and Napoleon was lighting the fire. Illya wanted to get up, to move, to do _something_. He couldn't read. He couldn't follow programmes on the television. He didn't want to go out because every time he left the apartment he felt like such a terrible cripple, like a disaster. He was ashamed, but the great unseen world scared him. He couldn't do anything.

Tears were falling again. He hated what he had become. He was a useless lump of meat who just sat and cried, and he wished Napoleon had done nothing that time on the balcony when he had leant further and further over the edge. But he kept the doors locked now and wouldn't tell Illya where he kept the key, and Illya didn't have the energy for anything planned and drastic.

'Hey,' Napoleon said.

The sofa creaked and shifted as Napoleon sat down. Then Napoleon's fingertips were touching his face, stroking the tears from his cheeks. He was so soft, so gentle. He had been so good and patient through everything, and Illya felt ashamed of how he had been for the last week or more. He leaned a little closer in towards Napoleon's touch. He felt so cut off from other people, so cut off from the world.

And then – there was something softer than Napoleon's fingertips, something softer touching his cheek. It took a moment to interpret that soft, hot touch, but the warmth of breath gave it away. It was Napoleon's lips on his cheek, his lips kissing him so gently and so lightly it was like being brushed by petals. He sighed, and the sigh turned into a stronger lurching sob, and Napoleon's touch grew stronger too, his fingers stroking now at Illya's hair where it met his temple, his lips kissing away the tears as they fell.

He turned his head a little, wondering, somehow hoping. He didn't know where this feeling had come from but it was like a flame and it needed air. His lips brushed against Napoleon's then, were caught by Napoleon's, and suddenly Napoleon's hand was at the back of his head, holding him, and their lips were together, kissing and kissing around the sobs. He tasted the salt of his own tears on Napoleon's lips. He drank in his warm breath and as he gasped out another sob he slipped his tongue forward and tasted the hot inside of Napoleon's mouth, the sweet taste of him, and it was like falling.

He was dizzy. His head was spinning. He was still sobbing so hard. The kissing had stopped and he was tight in Napoleon's arms, held against him, heaving in breath, his tears soaking into Napoleon's shirt. And he could feel Napoleon's lips still, pressed against his hair. Napoleon was still kissing him, kissing him so softly and gently, stroking his back, kissing his hair. He choked out his grief against Napoleon's chest until he felt empty and echoing and so, so tired.

'God, Illya, I'm sorry,' Napoleon said as Illya stilled. His voice came through the air to one ear, but through the other ear, pressed against Napoleon's chest, it resonated and reached him from inside. It was so strong, so real.

'Why?' Illya asked. His voice felt strange, cracked and strange.

Napoleon stroked his hair, but he said, 'Taking advantage. Taking advantage of you while you're like this.'

'Oh,' Illya said.

He kept his eyes closed, tried to preserve some kind of fleeting feeling that he wasn't blind, that he just wasn't looking at anything right now. He was surrounded by the scent and feel of Napoleon, and it was like finding land after being lost at sea. If he kept his eyes closed he could pretend that when he opened them there would be sight.

'I kissed you back,' he said, because he had. He had kissed Napoleon back, and it had felt so perfect.

Napoleon laughed quietly, and his laugh was a rumble through his chest. 'Yes. Yes, I suppose you did,' he said.

Illya sat silent for a while, keeping his head against Napoleon's chest, trying to preserve this moment where he felt so safe and so loved. He was afraid that if he moved everything would fall apart. Reality would intrude. Common sense would come over him like a wave.

'Why now?' he asked finally, knowing that the question invited reality to smash everything apart, but having to ask. 'Why, Napoleon? Why did you do this now?'

A little voice inside him said, _because I'm weak, because I'm dependent, because I've been reduced to incapability…_

'I don't know,' Napoleon said eventually.

He kissed Illya's hair one last time and then pulled away so that they were sitting side by side on the sofa. Without that intense contact Illya felt bereft. He opened his eyes to the stark truth of his blindness, and his stomach lurched. He was blind, he was so blind, he had just choked out all of his emotions against Napoleon's chest, and he was empty and so alone.

'I don't know,' Napoleon said again, and Illya turned to his voice, wishing so hard he could be touching him again, just to have an island to cling to. 'We've been living in such close quarters, Illya. We've been intimate in so many ways. It's – it's made me see some things I didn't realise I – '

'Because I'm blind,' Illya cut across him precipitately, feeling that awful dropping feeling, knowing he had to spell reality out before it caught him. 'Because you always have to go after the innocent, Napoleon. You always take the poor scared innocent in your arms and tell her so many untruths about how safe you'll make her, and then you romance her into your bed, and – '

'For god's sake, Illya! Do you really think I'd treat you like that?'

The sofa lurched. Napoleon must be on his feet. He was moving away. Illya felt as if he were falling, and he stood too, reaching out a hand and finding only air. For once his words had been too much, and he regretted them bitterly.

'Napoleon! Listen, Napoleon – ' He took a step forward, hand still outstretched. He was _so_ blind. He felt it so terribly, so desperately. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm sorry. I'm – You know I'm so messed up...'

He could hear Napoleon's breathing somewhere ahead of him. Was the coffee table between them? He couldn't remember, and couldn't bring himself to stumble about. He just stood there, listening.

The whole apartment seemed silent, pressed into only by the crackling of the fire and Napoleon's breaths. Then fingers touched his arm, and then Napoleon had him held in a hug again, his hand on the back of Illya's head again. It was as if for a little while Napoleon had faded from existence, but now he was here again, real again; the scent and solidity and softness of him.

'I know, Illya,' he said. 'I know you're going through hell. But don't ever think I'm treating you like the girl of the moment. You're my partner, my best friend, the closest constant in my life.'

'Everything's changed,' Illya said, and he fought so hard to keep his voice from breaking yet again.

'I know,' Napoleon said, stroking his back through his shirt, stroking his shoulder blades and down his spine. 'I know. Illya, I'm not trying to take advantage of you. You're not a poor scared innocent. But I – Illya, I think I'm realising just how much I care for you. I want to bring you happiness. I want to make you happy again.'

How could he be happy? His mind flailed at that thought. But then he remembered the sensation of Napoleon's lips against his, the feeling of complete warmth and safety that had cocooned him, and he lifted a hand to touch Napoleon's face, to trace lightly along the line of his temple and jaw. He felt smooth skin turn to the roughness of stubble. He had been so, _so_ disconnected, and now here was Napoleon, right under his fingers.

'I'm not a girl,' he said, his fingers still on Napoleon's cheek. Wasn't that the huge stumbling block here? He was a man and Napoleon was a man, both of them there against each other, hard, masculine, flat chested and strong. Wasn't this so, so wrong?

Napoleon laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. 'Well, gee, Illya, I wish you'd said sooner.'

'Napoleon, I'm serious,' Illya said impatiently. 'Don't you – don't you see anything wrong here?'

'I see you,' Napoleon said softly, taking hold of his hand, 'and I see me. I know you're not a girl, Illya. I don't care. Do you?'

'I – ' He didn't know. He had hardly allowed himself to think about these things before. He had always been attracted to girls in a far more muted, subtle way than Napoleon's flamboyant need. But he thought of Napoleon now, thought of the lines of his body and what lay under his clothes, and a terrible desire ran through him.

'Illya, it is possible to like girls _and_ guys,' Napoleon said very softly. 'It's possible to like someone for themselves, and their body just sort of – comes along for the ride.'

'Oh,' Illya said, but this felt like so much, like too much. His head was whirling. This was so much.

'You know I'm very open minded,' Napoleon continued. 'I've always thought you were a very attractive man.'

'Don't,' Illya said quickly. Everything was spinning and churning. 'Don't. It's too much. Just let me – let me feel this without thinking it. Can you let me?'

Napoleon pressed his lips lightly against Illya's forehead and said, 'Deep thinking was always your department, IK _._ Don't worry. We have all the time in the world. Listen. Why don't you come into the kitchen with me and we'll make coffee? Sit down, drink some coffee, figure out what to do with our day. It's a lovely, bright, crisp winter day.'

'I can't see it,' Illya said, couldn't help but say.

'I know,' Napoleon told him gently. 'But that doesn't stop the day being out there. It doesn't stop the world. I want you to start trying to face the world, Illya. You have to start facing the world.'

Napoleon's hand was still around his, and his partner started leading him towards the kitchen. Illya followed him, opening his eyes wide to the empty white blur, trying to make out any kind of useful change in the light as he moved. It was all so much, too much; this blanket of sightlessness about him and now this, Napoleon's hand in his, the knowledge of how it felt to kiss Napoleon, the yearning to touch him more. How could he know it was real? How could he trust his own feelings?

'Illya,' Napoleon said softly, stopping him on the hard kitchen floor. 'I _am_ sorry I took advantage of you just now. It was wonderful. It felt wonderful. But it's obvious that you're not in a fit state – '

'Let me shepherd my own emotions, Napoleon,' Illya retorted, almost growled.

He reached out his free hand, finding Napoleon's shoulder and then his cheek. He laid his palm there, still against Napoleon's warm skin, against the roughness of stubble. He would have to spend time in quiet, in darkness, just lying and thinking about this. But touching Napoleon was like a drug.

'Make the coffee,' he said softly, letting his fingertips linger on Napoleon's cheek, and then drop.

'I'll make the coffee. You get the mugs and the cream,' Napoleon said.

Illya froze momentarily. 'I – don't know where – '

'The mugs are on the draining board still from last night,' Napoleon told him. 'The cream is in the refrigerator, second shelf down, I think, in a small, square jug. Come on. You know the layout of the kitchen well enough. There's nothing between the table and the fridge, nothing between the table and the draining board. Two mugs and a jug of cream. You've taken down entire Thrush installations single handed. You can fetch some mugs and cream.'

He hated moving about with his hands out, feeling his way. He hated looking so blind, and he must look _so_ blind. But what choice was there? He had been left with no choice at all. He knew what Napoleon was trying to do. He had been slumping deeper and deeper into this terrible chasm where he could barely lift an arm. He had to start to climb out. He remembered being tossed into that dry well on the French Riviera. Hadn't he climbed out of that place? Hadn't he dug his fingers and toes into the earth and rock and pulled himself out, inch by inch? He could have died in that well.

He put his hand out and moved carefully across the kitchen. His fingertips hit the front of the cupboards, slipped up to feel the counter. He pushed them across the cool surface and found the metal of the sink.

'That's it,' Napoleon said from over by the percolator, where the scent of coffee was pushing into the air. 'The drainer's on the other side. There are only those two mugs on it. I put everything else away last night before we had the coffee.'

He felt, tracking his fingers across the smooth, cold metal. He felt the ridges of the draining board, and then the cold, slick ceramic of a mug. That must be Napoleon's. He ran his fingertips over it, trying to remember what it looked like, but it was just a cold, smooth mug. Beside it was his own, the green one, furrowed with the lighter patterns in the surface. He could see that in his mind at least. He picked both up and moved very carefully back to the table. He knocked into one of the chairs and stumbled.

'You okay?' Napoleon asked quickly.

'Yes,' Illya said, reaching over the chair and finding the table, putting the cups down on the wooden surface. 'A chair in the way. I suppose that was a lesson. I should have held both cups in one hand, left the other one free.'

'Ah, that was my chair. I didn't push it back properly,' Napoleon said. 'I guess we're both learning lessons, aren't we? Now, how about that cream?'

'Okay.'

Illya passed his hands over the table to be sure the mugs weren't too close to the edge, then moved over towards where he thought the refrigerator stood.

'A bit to the left,' Napoleon said, and he altered his course. He felt like a ship navigating in deep fog. He found the door of the fridge and opened it, and started feeling for the cream jug. It felt so complicated. The shelf was covered in cold, hard, smooth sided containers, and he felt lost. It was so ridiculous. He was so unable.

'I can't,' he said after a while. 'I can't find it.'

Napoleon came across the room and stood behind him, closing a hand over his.

'Here,' he said, moving Illya's hand with his. 'I said the wrong shelf. It's on the top, just here. Got it?'

Illya touched the jug and felt its flat, cold sides, and asked, 'Is it full?'

'Why don't you find out?'

A little feeling of frustration welled. Napoleon could _see_. He could see at a glance. Wouldn't it be easier for Napoleon to just tell him? Wouldn't it be easier for Napoleon to just pick up the jug himself now he was here?

'Go on,' Napoleon said behind him, and he bit down on the frustration and cautiously dipped his fingertip into the jug. The cream was well below the brim.

'All right, Napoleon,' he said. 'All right, I appreciate what you're trying to do for me. But wouldn't it be better if you carried it to the table?'

'I trust you,' Napoleon said softly. 'Anyway, if you spill a little, so what? I can wipe it up.'

So Illya picked up the jug and brought it carefully to the table as over on the other side of the room the percolator spluttered and hissed.

'It's rather pathetic, isn't it?' Illya asked as he put the jug down. 'To feel a sense of achievement from fetching a jug of cream.'

'Not in the slightest,' Napoleon told him instantly. 'You've got to start somewhere.'

Illya slumped into a chair at the table. He was one of the best sharp shooters in the U.N.C.L.E. gun range. He was an explosives expert. He could pilot a Lear jet, a helicopter, drive cars at well over a hundred miles an hour. The feeling of achievement at carrying a jug of cream across the room suddenly seemed so ridiculous that he could have picked up that jug and smashed it on the floor.

'Hey,' Napoleon said, laying his hands on Illya's shoulders. 'I like that jug,' he said in a light tone that hardly covered his concern. 'I don't want it to go the same way as my dinner plates and my coffee cups.'

Illya clenched his hands hard. He was shaking.

'Illya,' Napoleon said softly and entirely seriously now. 'You've only been out of hospital for two weeks. You have to give it time.'

Illya pressed his hands onto the smooth wood grain of the tabletop and said shakily, 'But this is the rest of my life...'

He was falling again, plummeting into that endless hole. When he had been tipped into that dry well on the Riviera he had climbed up to the light. But now...

Napoleon's hands kneaded gently at his shoulders.

'One day at a time, Illya,' he said softly. 'It will be all right.'


	8. Chapter 8

'Come on,' Napoleon said, patting his hand on Illya's arm. 'You're going to do it this time.'

Illya stood in the big living room of Napoleon's apartment – of _their_ apartment, he had to keep reminding himself – and he didn't want to go out at all. All his previous attempts at going for walks with Napoleon had been terrible. He still hadn't been able to make himself go further than the lobby or down to the end of the block. It all felt so awful, walking in this fog, clinging to Napoleon's arm, trying not to stumble, to not make a fool of himself. But he had been fighting so hard, making himself do the things that he couldn't imagine doing, making himself do things despite his fear of the mistakes he would make.

'Just a walk,' Napoleon said. 'No big goal, no destiny.'

'I want my sunglasses,' Illya said.

'Illya, your eyes don't look – ' Napoleon began, but Illya cut over him, 'I want my sunglasses because it's too bright out there and it hurts my eyes, but I know that my eyes look awful. Please find them for me, Napoleon.'

Napoleon sighed, but he got the glasses and gave them to Illya, and he slipped them on. He felt better with that simple shield hiding his ruined eyes. Then there was something warm and soft being put around his neck, and Napoleon said gently, 'It's cold out there. Get that properly round your neck, and here are your gloves.'

Illya busied himself with knotting the scarf and pushing his hands into the gloves, and asked, 'Is there snow?'

'Not just now, no,' Napoleon said.

He was silent, then he touched Illya's arm, then leaned in and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He had been so careful and restrained around Illya since that morning when they had kissed, never pushing anything, never going beyond a caress or a kiss. Illya half wished that he would do more, but he didn't feel able to make that leap himself, and perhaps he was glad that Napoleon was holding himself back. There were so many new things to adjust to and the idea of a full romantic relationship with his best friend was more than a little unnerving.

'All right, I'm ready,' Illya said, knowing his voice was a little too brusque.

He hated this whole business. It was bad enough just going down to the car for the appointments to have his eyes checked. He didn't want to go strolling about the city. He really didn't. But he hated the fear that crept around him. It was ridiculous to be fearful of going outside. Really, what could happen? Napoleon would be armed; he always was. He would put down any would-be Thrush attacks before they began, and it wasn't as if Thrush went around attacking U.N.C.L.E. agents out of the blue that often. So what was he afraid of? The unseen cars, the uneven ground, the people in the street. Losing Napoleon... He knew Napoleon would never leave him stranded. Falling, tripping, failing. Hadn't he tripped and fallen plenty of times in his life? It was ridiculous to be afraid.

He held Napoleon's arm because the leaflets had said that that was the best way for the sighted to guide the blind. It was better than being held onto, than being pushed in front of someone and unable to regulate his own pace and progress. So he held Napoleon's arm and followed him out of the apartment, into the elevator, across the lobby that smelt faintly of damp, and down the hard steps of the stoop into the freezing street.

'Okay?' Napoleon asked him in the street, and Illya nodded. He listened to the sound of passing cars and remembered what the buildings looked like that flanked both sides of the street. He remembered the feeling of walking in an architectural canyon, remembered all the windows looking down like blank eyes. Then he thought of his own blank eyes and his stomach lurched. He wanted to rip off the sunglasses and see. The feeling was so strong it made his palms itch.

'Come on,' Napoleon said, and his arm moved, and Illya followed.

'A bit slower,' he said, his head down, concentrating. The feeling of the paved ground under his feet seemed the most important thing in the world. He wanted to hold his hand out in front of him to ward off unseen things. He wanted so much to go back to the safety of the apartment. The further he got from the front door the more lost he felt.

'Okay,' Napoleon said, and slowed his pace. 'The sidewalk's pretty clear,' he began in a light tone. 'Not many people out today. Street's quiet too. There's a couple of kids playing around about twenty yards ahead. They must be cold. Quite a few parked cars on this side of the street. There's a guy standing in the doorway to the store on the corner, smoking. The smoke's making quite a cloud because the air's so still.'

Illya appreciated Napoleon's attempts. He heard the children that his partner spoke of. He heard the hard glass snick of marbles hitting marbles and one of the children laughing shrilly. He followed Napoleon past them and when they got closer to the store on the corner he smelt the cigarette smoke in the air. He wanted to ask what was there, who was there, but he kept his mouth closed.

'Okay,' Napoleon said. 'Time to cross the street. There's quite a drop at the kerb,' he warned Illya.

Illya turned with him towards the street and listened to the cars and tried to quench that sick feeling in his stomach. It was just a road. They were just cars.

'Now,' Napoleon said, and Illya stumbled off the kerb, which was higher than he remembered, and followed Napoleon across the street. 'Squeezing in between two parked cars,' Napoleon said.

One of the cars came into being as Illya reached out a hand and felt through his glove the smooth metal, the slight angle of the bonnet, he thought, and then the vertical metal detail of the radiator grille. Should he be touching it? He wouldn't usually touch another person's car, but this was different, wasn't it? Didn't he have the right to touch if he couldn't see?

'Okay, kerb again,' Napoleon said as his fingers slipped over the limit of the car bonnet. 'You got that?'

'Yeah,' Illya said, kicking at it with his foot before stepping up.

He wanted to go back to the apartment. What the hell was he doing out here, blind, in the middle of the city, walking for no reason at all? The air was freezing on his face and pinched at his burns. The noises of traffic and people were a chaos in his ears, and if for any reason he lost touch with Napoleon's arm he would be utterly lost. This was ridiculous, hideous. He felt so vulnerable.

'You've walked half the length of a whole block,' Napoleon said in an encouraging tone. 'We've come to the end of the block and crossed to the other side of the street. A few more yards and we'll cross to the next block. Okay?'

'Yes,' Illya said. He felt so miserable. He felt so blind, so helpless. A wave of anger rose in his chest and he miserably fought it down. _Why?_ his mind kept asking. _Why did this have to happen to me? Why did I deserve this?_

'Kerb again,' Napoleon said, stopping, 'but it's more shallow this time. Got it?'

'Yes,' Illya said. He slid his foot forward and felt the sharp drop off. He angled his foot to find the depth of the kerb.

Napoleon took him across another street and started describing things to him again.

'We're just going past the pool hall. The front doors are open even in this cold. They're renovating the place next door.'

Illya brought it to mind. He could hear hammering. 'The Chinese restaurant. What was it called? Is it closed?'

'I think they're just doing some modernisation.'

They moved on past the restaurant. The noise of hammering faded away. He followed Napoleon around a corner and along another hard street. The sounds of cars grew and faded. People walked past them and overtook from behind. Somewhere there was loud hooting, and then shouting. There was a clatter and clang, the sound of something being done with a truck, loading or unloading. He had used to use these streets as a playground for spy work, dodging in and out of alleys, slipping through doors, finding cover and waiting there with his gun ready. A month ago he had had a stand off with a Thrush man in the warren of alleys just three blocks from here, and had shot him through a crack no wider than his fist.

'Someone's had a fire,' Napoleon said in an interested tone. 'There's a big rig in the street and a ladder up to a third floor window. I can see the blackening around the window, so it must have been pretty serious. There's a woman on the street with a blanket around her shoulders.'

Illya could hear the concern growing just beneath Napoleon's conversational tone, and he said rather more briskly than he meant to, 'Concern yourself with one hard luck story at a time, Napoleon.'

Napoleon made an irritated little noise and said, 'You're not a hard luck story, Illya. You're my friend.'

All the same, he was being taken for a walk like a dog who hadn't been exercised in too long. It was cold and his face hurt and he felt so crippled.

'All right,' Napoleon said. 'Left turn here. No kerb. We're going into the park.'

'Oh,' Illya said, lifting his head a little. He hadn't expected that.

'Nice level paths,' Napoleon said. 'The trees are all bare, Illya, and there's not much beautiful to describe but it's a good open space. I thought you might appreciate it.'

'Oh,' Illya said again. How was he supposed to appreciate this? How was it different from anything else if you couldn't see it?

They walked a little while then Napoleon said, 'Okay, there's a bench here. Let's sit down.'

So Illya sat on the cold wooden bench and Napoleon kept talking.

'We're facing a big square of lawn. The path runs all the way round it. The ground's very brown and muddy but there's still grass in places. Trees behind the path all the way round. There's someone walking a big dog over on the other side. Can you hear the leash jingling, Illya?'

'Is that what that is?' Illya asked, his interest piqued a little. He had heard the little metallic noise coming across the open ground. And then he realised how the ground _did_ feel open. Somehow there was a sense of that space in front of him, because the jingling sound reached to him directly without anything else muffling it. He heard the dog bark suddenly, and the owner say something; a deep, male voice. He saw in his mind that dog, and the owner wrapped up against the cold. Perhaps his image was completely inaccurate, but it was an image.

'The dog's seen a squirrel,' Napoleon commented, with a little chuckle. 'The squirrel's high-tailed it up a tree and the dog's angry because he can't climb. Can you hear the squirrel chattering?'

Illya turned his head a little. Yes, he could hear the squirrel, and he could hear the panting, rasping noises of the dog straining against its collar. It sounded like a big dog and he resisted asking Napoleon how big it was. He hated revealing just how nervous dogs made him, but they made him even more nervous when he couldn't see them.

'There are sparrows pecking around on the path,' Napoleon continued. 'I think someone must have dropped some crumbs. They look starved, poor things. Maybe next time we come out I'll bring some bread.'

 _That's nice_ , Illya thought, although he didn't reply. Napoleon was so generous.

'The grass is starting to die off,' Napoleon continued. 'It all looks a little brown, lots of mud coming where the children run around. There's a couple of little kids over there, brother and sister, I think, all bundled up. She has a red bobble hat and scarf and gloves and he has blue. I think they must be about five and three. They're running about having a whale of a time. Can you hear them screaming?'

Illya smiled. Yes, he could hear them screaming. He could hear their thudding footsteps and their high pitched voices, and sometimes the voice of the mother adding to the noise. When they ran on the path their footsteps were slapping, hard, echoing. When they moved onto the grass they made a more muted thudding noise. And there was another noise.

'Do they have a ball?' he asked.

'Yes,' Napoleon told him. 'Yeah, a blue and yellow and pink ball about – oh, about eight inches in diameter. She's taken her gloves off and she's throwing it but he's younger and he can't catch it. He runs after it and throws it back to her.'

'Ah. Yes, I can hear,' Illya said, and he smiled. It felt odd to smile, but he smiled because he could hear when the ball hit the flat resistance of the girl's hands, and he could hear when it veered off and hit the mud or the path.

He sat there just listening. The sound of traffic was fainter because of the insulating space of the park. He could hear the occasional breath of wind in the tree branches, and when that happened his sense of the whole space came alive. Sometimes he thought he heard a little rustle on the ground. Perhaps that was the sparrows looking in the leaf mould for food.

'Are you all right?' Napoleon asked, and he nodded.

'Yes. Just listening,' he said.

Napoleon bumped gently against Illya's side, a subtle little movement that was like a tacit hug.

'Want to walk on a little?' he asked.

'Okay,' Illya said.

So he stood and took hold of Napoleon's arm again, and they carried on walking along the flat, hard paths. Then Napoleon said, 'Come right a little, and we'll be on the grass.'

The hard soles of his shoes moved from the ungiving tarmac onto the soft muddy grass and he felt the change all the way up through his body. They walked for a while over the grass, and then onto paths again, and Napoleon kept talking about what he could see, describing the birds, the trees, the people, an unexpected red flower on a bush, that turned out to be a piece of rubbish. And then just as the wonder at what he could feel and hear started to give way to that old dull pain again at what he couldn't see, Napoleon said, 'I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty cold. Shall we go home?'

'Yes,' Illya said, and didn't manage to hide the relief in his voice. He felt ridiculously tired. How could just walking to the park be so tiring?

'Come on, then,' Napoleon said. 'We're not far from the gate.'

That surprised Illya. He had had no idea that they had turned back towards the gate. He had no idea where they were. He was totally dependent on Napoleon.

As they walked back out into the busier, noisier streets Illya let his attention drop right down to just what Napoleon was telling him and the feeling of the ground under his feet. There was such a difference between the streets and the park, and it seemed busier out now.

'Hey, I'm just stopping at this stand for a moment,' Napoleon said, and Illya agreed without really paying attention. He could smell hot fat and heard a thickly accented voice speaking, and Napoleon bought something that came in a rustling paper bag.

'Here you are, Illya. That'll warm you up,' Napoleon said as they walked on.

He could smell the rich scent of something doughy. 'What is it?' he asked.

'Pretzels,' Napoleon told him, so Illya stripped off a glove and accepted one of the soft, sweet treats. It did warm up his chilled insides, but it felt complicated to concentrate on walking and eating, and he didn't like not having a free hand, so he said, 'Thank you, Napoleon. Let's save the rest for when we get back?'

((O))

Illya looked so tired when they got back into the apartment that Napoleon almost felt guilty for forcing him out. Almost, but he had seen how much good the walk had done his friend. He hated to see Illya retreating further and further into this dark, desperate place and had despaired when his few attempts to take him out had failed. But this had worked. There had been something of a change in Illya, he thought; a movement from total despair to a soft determination to fight back.

They stepped in through the door of the apartment and Illya took off his sunglasses and coat and gloves and then just stood there, his face pale, hands at his sides. Napoleon stepped close to him and leant his head against Illya's, pressing his forehead against Illya's chill forehead.

'You did well,' he said.

Illya made a little noise, a tired little snort that was half amused and half self-deprecating.

'I walked all the way to the park and back,' he said, and the tiredness was all through his voice.

'You did well,' Napoleon repeated. He put his hands on Illya's cheeks, steadied his head, and leant in and softly kissed his lips. Illya responded, coming a little more alive, lifting his hands to touch Napoleon's hair, his neck, his back.

'Mmm, you taste of pretzels,' Napoleon said as they came apart, and Illya smiled. Napoleon looked at his face, at that small, shy smile and his full lips, and his heart lurched.

'Oh, god, Illya,' he said, moving in to kiss him again, wanting to do so much more. He wanted to strip the clothes from him and take him to the bed and adore him. His lips felt so perfect, he tasted so perfect. He stroked his hands down Illya's arms and twined their fingers together and tasted the depths of Illya's mouth with his tongue. But he knew that his friend was tired. He knew that what he had achieved today was huge, and that Illya's feelings about that were all over the place. He couldn't take advantage of that vulnerability.

'Let's make coffee,' he said. 'We can have some coffee and finish off these pretzels while they're still warm.'

'All right,' Illya agreed, so Napoleon kissed him once more and then went into the kitchen.

When he came back into the living room he found Illya standing by the stereo system, his fingertips touching the worn edges of Napoleon's many LPs that stood packed in the shelf beneath the record player. His lips were pressed together in a thin line, and he looked dejected.

'What were you after?' Napoleon asked, coming to him. 'Look, I should put dividers in for the different letters of the alphabet. That would help narrow things down.'

Illya shrugged. 'I don't know. Your taste in music is terrible. Just something to listen to. But I can't – '

Napoleon could see the despair coming over him again. 'You will be able to,' he said. 'Illya, you know there are schools, don't you? You know there are places you can go to learn how to live like this? You could learn braille, you could get a cane or a seeing eye dog, or – '

He saw Illya stiffen.

'You're going to have to do it,' he persisted, putting a hand on his friend's arm. 'Illya, you _are_ blind. Ignoring ways to help yourself, refusing to move on – that's not going to make you less blind. It's only going to make things harder for longer.'

'I know,' Illya said, a little lurch coming through his voice.

'How about something classical, huh?' Napoleon asked. He didn't want to push Illya too far. 'All the classical is here, on this upper shelf.' He moved Illya's hand to show him then leafed through the albums and pulled one out. 'Ah, yes. Some Tchaikovsky, yes?'

'Yes,' Illya said. 'Yes, that would be fine.'

'Okay,' Napoleon said, putting the album into his hands. 'So, you get it on the stereo. I'll help you if you need me to, but you put it on.'

Illya took the record in his hands and then felt over the record player. He opened the lid and very carefully extracted the disk from the cardboard and then the paper sleeve. He felt over the turntable to find the spindle in the centre, and fitted the disk onto it.

'Is that side one or two?' he asked.

'Side one. I'll find a way of marking them for you, Illya. I could put a dot of something on each A side.'

'I don't know the buttons,' he said then.

'That's all right. I'll help you.' Napoleon put his hands on Illya's. 'It's already set to 33. Look, you can feel where it is. Now, here's the start...'

He helped Illya carefully to get the record going, and soft string music started to sound through the room. He took Illya's hand and led him to the sofa, then brought the coffee and the bag of pretzels through. He sat very close to Illya and just enjoyed the feeling of being next to him, watching the look on Illya's face as the music played.

'You should get out your English horn one day,' he suggested. Illya might not be able to read or work right now but he could play music.

'Yes, that might be my only way of earning a living,' Illya said wryly, and Napoleon grimaced.

'Illya, I want you to come with me to find out about a school,' he said firmly. 'You need to start moving forward.'

'I know,' Illya said. He carefully put his coffee cup down on the table in front of them, then smiled and said, 'I know, Napoleon. I will come with you. It's just – hard.'

'I guess this is the hardest thing you've ever faced,' Napoleon nodded, stroking Illya's arm.

Illya gave a hollow little laugh. 'Maybe,' he said. 'Yes, I suppose it is. I've been through bad times, but nothing – nothing that was going to last a lifetime...'

Napoleon felt the enormity of it then, as Illya must feel it. He looked at Illya and it struck him how very young he was. They were both very young. Illya hadn't seen much more than thirty five years of life. His cheeks were smooth and his lips were full and there wasn't a hint of grey in his hair. He was young and fit and vital and full of such an energy for life. He had been… But for now there were still scabs and patches of scarring on his face despite the cutting edge creams and treatments prescribed by the U.N.C.L.E. Infirmary doctors. And his eyes – his eyes _did_ look ruined, no matter what he might say to Illya about them. He missed the blue of Illya's eyes so much. He missed Illya's sureness of action, his confidence, his bright interest in the world. So much of him seemed to have been stripped away, and he hoped to god that it would come back. He suddenly saw Illya as a fifty year old, sixty, seventy, still without sight, and his heart tightened. The enormity of what Illya had lost came over him like a wave.

'God, Illya,' he said, unable to hide his own distress from his voice no matter how hard he tried. 'Illya, I'm so sorry. I am so, _so_ sorry. If I'd been able to – '

'Napoleon, _don't_ ,' Illya said very quickly, reaching out, fumbling, until Napoleon moved his own hand to take Illya's fingers. 'Don't. If we'd managed to flush my eyes, if I'd got to the hospital sooner. We _didn't_. It didn't happen. If you hadn't gone on and cleared out the building we might both be dead now. I'd rather be – ' His voice hitched a little, his hand tightened on Napoleon's, and he cleared his throat and said, 'I'd rather be blind than dead. Really, Napoleon. I would rather be blind than dead.'

Napoleon stroked his fingers into the fine blond hair at Illya's temple. His hair was so soft there. He felt the solid curve of Illya's skull beneath the warm, living skin, and he loved the mind inside it. He had always felt there was something of a window, just a little glimpse, into Illya's thoughts through his eyes, but now there was just the barest hint of the dark of Illya's irides and pupils under that pearly white haze, and the whites of his eyes were still bloodshot and painful looking. There wasn't any way of looking at him without knowing how utterly blind he was.

He lifted Illya's hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles, and then his fingertips, and then when Illya sighed a little he leant in to softly kiss his cheek and then his lips.

'I'm so sorry, Illya,' he murmured. 'I'm so, so sorry.'

'Don't,' Illya said, reaching up to stroke Napoleon's face, lightly tracing his fingers over Napoleon's lips as if he were trying to remember how they looked. As his fingertip moved over Napoleon's top lip a shiver ran all the way down his spine. Illya's fingers moved gently over his cheeks, and hesitated as they encountered wetness there.

'Napoleon, are you crying?' he asked.

Napoleon smiled, and let Illya feel the smile in the movement of his cheeks. 'Not entirely,' he said. He cupped Illya's cheek with his hand, leant forward, kissed him again. 'Just a little,' he said. 'You know me. Hard, emotionless, ruthless spy, until – '

'Until you crack through the carapace?'

Illya's smile echoed Napoleon's. He stroked Napoleon's neck and across his shoulder, then came back to his face again as if he couldn't bear to stop reading his expression through his fingers.

'Having someone cry for me, it makes me feel less alone,' he said.

'I know I can't get inside this, Illya,' Napoleon replied. 'I know I can't be blind with you. But I will be here and I will help you and guide you for as long as you need me. You'll never be alone.'


	9. Chapter 9

Illya tried to read something of the day as he sat in the cab on the way to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. He tried to feel something of the weather, what the sky might look like, how light it was, but in the end all he could tell was that it was cold and not very light yet. It wasn't yet nine o'clock, but Waverly had summoned him for quarter past nine, and so here he was being driven in so that he would arrive in plenty of time.

He felt as if he were heading to his execution. Perhaps Napoleon felt the same, because he was very quiet in the seat beside him.

'Tell me something,' Illya said suddenly. He couldn't bear the silence. 'Tell me what you can see.'

'Oh.' Napoleon cleared his throat then said, 'Oh, well, it's still quite dim out there but the sun's struggling through. No shadows. The clouds are too thick. It looks like snow.'

'But it's not snowing?'

'Not yet, no. I wouldn't be surprised if it came down hard later, though.'

Illya nodded. Talking was little better than silence. His insides still churned. Napoleon put a hand over his and he let it rest there, feeling the little pulse of the blood in his fingertips, the soft heat of the pads of his palm.

When they left the cab Napoleon took him down into the little tailor's shop. He walked from the freezing air outside into the sudden warmth, the scent of steam and cleaning fluids and fabric, and it felt like coming home, but so strange and so wrong. Del Floria was effusive and full of sympathy, which made Illya feel even worse, and when he went through into the reception the girl behind the desk got up and came round to hug him and kiss his cheek and he thought he heard her sniff as she pinned on his badge. Illya couldn't tell who she was and didn't want to ask.

'I still have my badge, at least,' he said with a little smile, moving his fingers over the 2 engraved in the surface. 'It _is_ yellow, isn't it?'

'It's yellow,' Napoleon assured him.

'Good,' Illya nodded, but it struck him that Napoleon could so easily be lying. He had no way to tell. It could be a green visitor's badge and everyone could be lying to him.

He couldn't think like that. He trusted Napoleon. He had to.

It felt so strange to be walking blind through these corridors. Napoleon took him all the way up to Waverly's office and into the room, and there was a definite awkwardness in Waverly's voice as he greeted them.

'Thank you, Mr Solo,' he said as Napoleon took Illya to a chair, put his hand to it, and Illya felt over the warm leather and slipped into the seat. 'Will you be in your office? I'll let you know when we're done here.'

He wasn't sure quite where at the round table he was sitting. He turned his head to try to gauge where the light from the windows was coming from, and thought it was behind him; so he was near Waverly's chair, back to the windows, as intimate as this table would allow. His supposition was confirmed when Waverly sat just a few feet from him.

'Mr Kuryakin, this is a very painful duty,' Waverly said when they were alone. 'Very painful.'

Illya clenched his hands under the table. It was hard to believe that he was sitting here in Waverly's office, sitting here blind, in the place he had spent so much time. He knew every facet of this office. He thought he could have stood up now and walked directly to the communications console, to the door, to Waverly's chair. Perhaps he wouldn't be able to, though. Thinking one could navigate a place blindfold wasn't the same as being able to. Now, for him, the place was limited to the feel of the firm leather chair under his thighs and back and the hard flatness of the table that was within his reach.

'Yes, sir,' he said. He tried to sound normal but he thought he was failing.

'You're to be awarded a full disability pension, of course,' Waverly said. 'And all of your medical expenses will be covered without question.'

The lump in Illya's throat felt too big to swallow around.

'Yes, sir,' he murmured again.

He listened to odd little noises. The wooden clatter of the lid of Alexander Waverly's humidor. The striking of a match. The scent of phosphorus flared into the air and mixed with the soft smell of tobacco.

'It's a painful duty,' Waverly said again, 'but your medical report is very clear. You aren't going to recover your sight, young man, and I have no choice but to retire you from today as an active agent.'

Illya fingered his yellow badge, pressing it against his chest. This would be the last time, then, that he would wear this badge. He hardly knew how to process his thoughts.

'Well, it's customary to _say_ something,' Waverly said, suddenly sounding a little impatient.

Illya cleared his throat. 'I'm sorry, sir,' he said. 'I – don't know what there is to say, except goodbye. I – don't know – '

'Goodbye?' Waverly repeated in an astonished voice. His pipe clattered on the table. Smoke was thick in the air.

Illya dropped his hand from his badge and touched the flat leather writing pad on the table in front of him instead. 'Well, sir, if I'm retired – '

The U.N.C.L.E. disability pension was generous, but the future felt very empty.

Waverly snorted. 'It's impossible for you to be an active agent, Mr Kuryakin, but you're one of the brightest and most innovative men in this organisation. We don't intend to let you go if there's any chance that you can be of use. You've applied yourself to many disciplines in your life, you've shown great adaptability. You're a polyglot, a scientist, an excellent critical thinker. I intend to sponsor your enrolment in a school for the blind, and when you're functional there will be a role for you here.'

For all of his fluency in several languages, all Illya could think of to say was, 'Oh.'

How could he possibly come back here? How could he possibly work? It seemed like a fairytale fancy, something that would crumble if touched.

'Come now, Mr Kuryakin,' Waverly said in an encouraging voice. 'You're an extremely intelligent man, and you're still quite young. You'll be able to learn braille, I'm sure, and become fully literate. You'll learn to use a cane. Have you considered perhaps getting a guide dog? I know you're not fond of dogs, but it would help you.'

Illya shuddered. He had too many bad memories of the dogs roaming the streets of Kyiv during the war. He dropped his head, blinking against the white blur of his sight. It was still almost unbelievable that he couldn't see his hands, couldn't see the table, couldn't look up and see Waverly's cragged face. How could any of this be real? How could he adapt well enough to come back to work at the U.N.C.L.E.?

He heard Waverly's chair creak. He was standing up and coming around the table. He stood behind Illya's chair for a moment and touched his shoulder, then pulled a chair closer to him and sat down again. Illya's head jerked up as he felt the touch of Waverly's aged hand on his own.

'Mr Kuryakin, you were a little boy during the war,' he said gently. 'I was a grown man during my war. The Great War, that is. Of course I served. I – well, I'm not entirely at liberty to say how I served, but I did serve. So did my school chums, many of them. Young Bertie Lawrence was one of them. Marvellous chap. Best slip fielder in the team. Boy could run as if there were dogs behind him.'

'Really, sir?' Illya asked, trying to sound interested. He felt so caught up in his own difficulties.

'Well, Bertie joined the army,' Waverly said. 'I told him to go with the Royal Flying Corps, but no, his father had been in the army, so he had to be in the army. He was caught by a shell. Shrapnel in the eyes, I'm afraid.'

Illya winced at that, shutting his own eyes momentarily in his stomach churning empathy for that pain.

'Well, precisely,' Waverly said, as if Illya had spoken instead of winced. 'Must have been in terrible pain, poor chap. But they got him out and they sent him home and they tried to help him.' His voice became more distant, his hand very still on Illya's. 'He wouldn't take help, you know. Wouldn't do a thing. Just sat in his chair and wouldn't do a thing.'

'Of course,' Illya murmured. He understood. He understood so deeply that he could have wept.

'Well, he did do a thing eventually,' Waverly said, and Illya straightened himself, waiting for the heartening tale of how Waverly's friend overcame his injury. 'Parents lived in a lovely spot. Beautiful place in Hertfordshire. Main line to London ran right along the edge of their land. And one day young Bertie took himself down there, and he lay down on the line and waited for the express to come. And it came. It came.'

Waverly's voice trailed off, but his hand pressed a little harder over Illya's. He sat there in complete silence, and Illya tried to process what he had said. It felt like too much to think about. He hadn't wanted to hear a tale of someone bravely overcoming their blindness, but this – he didn't know what to think.

'You are a bright, vital young man,' Waverly said eventually, his hand squeezing on Illya's. 'A terrible thing has happened to you, but you're alive and you're cherished by those closest to you. I have a mission for you, Mr Kuryakin. I want you to apply yourself to this problem with the determination that I've seen you apply to every other problem you've been faced with. I want you back in the organisation. Do you understand me?'

Illya lifted his head and smiled, just a little.

'Yes, I think so, sir,' he said. He put his other hand over Waverly's, feeling the dry age of his skin. But he couldn't understand how he could be of use to U.N.C.L.E. now. He couldn't imagine being any use at all. 'It's – It's very hard,' he said.

'Of course it's hard,' Waverly replied brusquely. 'Of course it is. But I have faith in you, Mr Kuryakin. I think you could go a long way in this organisation, with a good assistant to help you. A very long way.'

'Well, thank you, sir,' Illya murmured.

Waverly let go of his hand then, and patted his shoulder.

'Well, I had better take you down to your office. Mr Solo will be wondering what's happened to you,' he said brusquely.

'Oh, yes,' Illya said, getting to his feet, keeping a hand on the table. He shouldn't _need_ taking. He should be able to walk to his office alone. He felt so close to breaking down.

He was surprised by Waverly's arm coming to lie firmly over his shoulders.

'Come on, young man,' he said. 'Yes, that's it. I'll let you know if there's anything in your way.'

So Illya walked slowly with Waverly's arm around his shoulders, out of the office and into the corridor outside. He visualised that corridor. He had taken it so often at a run, responding to some emergency or alert. There wasn't much to see. Grey walls, grey floor, bright lights, sharp angles. He would have given a lot to see those angles or the dull grey walls. There were no edges in this soft white blur, and almost no colour.

He tried to process what Waverly had said as he was taken into the elevator. He was no longer an active agent. That was exactly what he had expected. But – His mind spun. He tried to imagine a future where he was working here once again, working here despite his defunct eyes. What could he do? How could he do it? To be able to come back he would have to accept fully that he wasn't going to ever see again. Going to a rehabilitation school was an admittance of that fact. It _was_ a fact. It was.

'Here you are, Mr Kuryakin,' Waverly said, opening a door in front of him. A chair rattled on casters and Napoleon said, 'Illya! Sir, I thought you were going to call me.'

'Well, I thought I'd walk this young man down to you,' Waverly said. 'I am allowed out of the office occasionally, you know.'

'Uh – yes, of course.' Napoleon came closer and then his hand was touching Illya's arm. 'Illya. Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' Illya assured him.

Waverly removed his arm from Illya's shoulders and patted his back lightly.

'Well, I'll leave you in the capable care of Mr Solo. Look after him, Mr Solo. We've got a lot invested in this young man.'

'I always look after him,' Napoleon assured his boss.

Waverly patted Illya on the back again and left, and Illya reached out a hand for Napoleon to guide him into the room.

'He's convinced I'm going to come back to work,' he said with a slight smile.

Napoleon took his hand, but instead of guiding him, he lifted Illya's hand and kissed his knuckles.

'Well, is he really?' he asked, in a tone that sounded rather smug to Illya's ears.

'Napoleon, I'm starting to suspect you know more about this than you are saying,' Illya said rather dryly, and Napoleon's hand squeezed on his.

'Well, it might be that Mr Waverly and I have had words,' Napoleon said. 'It might be that we mutually agreed that there's no reason you should have to retire completely.'

'I don't know what I could do,' Illya said, shaking his head, feeling extremely blind and so far away from being able to do anything useful. 'I really don't know what I could – '

Napoleon's hand squeezed his again. 'Trust him,' he said simply. 'He knows his men. He knows what you're capable of. He thinks you could get anywhere on the office side of the business. All the way to the top maybe.'

Illya spluttered. 'To the top? _Waverly's_ position?'

'Well, John Fielding practically invented the British police force, and he was blind. Have faith in yourself, Illya. We do.'

Illya smiled wanly. He felt so incapable. He didn't feel as though he could rise to the top of the organisation. He felt ready to break down. Napoleon must have somehow understood that because he let go of Illya for a moment and the door lock clicked into place, and then Napoleon's arms were around him firmly. Illya leant into that warm, safe, solid place and fought so hard to steady the emotions that were threatening to overwhelm him.

'Are you okay?' Napoleon asked, his voice very close to Illya's ear.

'Yes,' he said rather shakily. 'Yes. It's just – '

'There's a lot going through that mind of yours, yes?'

'Yes,' Illya said. It was an understatement, but he didn't know how to verbalise it all.

'It's okay,' Napoleon said gently, cupping a hand against the back of Illya's head. 'It's okay.'

He stood there, letting Napoleon hold him, trying to settle his wordless, whirling thoughts. He steadied his breathing and tried to settle the urge to cry, and in the end he took in a deep breath and said, 'I'm all right, Napoleon. I'm all right now.'

'All right,' Napoleon echoed, kissing the side of his head and then letting him go. He kept a hand on Illya's arm though. 'Listen, Illya, I boxed up some of your personal things in the office – you know what this place is like. As soon as someone sees something useful it'll be gone. But do you want to do the same in the lab? You have some things down there, don't you?'

'Oh, yes, a few things,' he nodded, thinking of his lab coat, a few instruments, the mug he kept for coffee.

'Well, come down with me to fetch those and we can get home,' Napoleon told him.

'All right,' Illya nodded.

He felt so stupidly tired after this meeting with Waverly. He felt so exposed and incapable being out like this – but he dreaded going back to the apartment too. He didn't know how to fill his days. He was spending too much time just sitting, dwelling.

Napoleon took him down to the labs and he went inside with him, praying the place would be empty, but James Alnwick, one of the technicians, was there, and came over to them immediately.

'We've just come to get my things,' Illya explained, and James said, 'Oh, sure, yeah. Let me look them out for you. Illya, I'm – Well, I don't know how to say how sorry I am...'

'It's all right,' Illya said awkwardly as James took his hand and clasped it and then let go again. He stood at the side of the room, feeling at a loss, while Napoleon moved around gathering the things that James pointed out. He listened to the clink of glass on metal. He heard the hiss of a Bunsen burner. He could smell the gas. There was such a distinctive smell to labs…

Something flipped over in him. He was there in Stockholm again, standing in the entrance to that lab. He was crouching under the bench, consumed with pain. He didn't have the emotional stamina for this today. He felt as if he were going to be sick. He stepped backwards towards the wall, reaching out behind him, and bumped into a bench that he had forgotten was there.

'Napoleon, I need to get out of here,' he said urgently, his voice roughening.

'Oh, I'll just – ' Napoleon said, but Illya said, 'No, Napoleon. Just get me out. I can't be in here. I can't – '

And then Napoleon was hustling him out of the room, calling back over his shoulder, 'Yeah, James, just get it sent over, please. There's a box in the office, too.'

Then Illya felt the cool solidity of a wall against his shoulder blades and Napoleon's hands were on his arms, and he was asking, 'Illya? Illya, are you okay?'

He gasped for breath, trying to calm the jumping of his heart. He blinked his eyes against the white blur, turning his head, desperate to somehow see. Where was he? He was out of the lab. He must be in the corridor...

'Illya?' Napoleon asked again.

He breathed deeply. He couldn't get away from that white blur. There was nowhere to go.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I'm okay.'

Napoleon's hand was on his shoulder, then on his cheek, then back on his shoulder again.

'Are you sure?'

Illya took in another deep breath, let it fill his lungs right to the bottom, and then let it out.

'Yes,' he said. 'Just for a moment – the sounds, the smells – '

He breathed again, slowly, trying to calm the surges of emotion. He could easily have cried. He was shaking all over.

'I shouldn't have brought you down here,' Napoleon muttered. 'Stupid. I didn't think...'

Illya drew in breath again and let it out. Every time he breathed out he had to hold in a sob.

'I'm all right,' he said. 'Really, I'm all right.'

Napoleon patted his arm gently. 'Yeah, you're all right like Waverly's in his twenties and I'm a woman and the world's flat. Let's go home, partner,' he said softly. 'Come on. Let's go home.'

((O))

The fire was crackling on the other side of the room, and Illya was sitting on the settee with his head leant back against the cushions. Music pushed into the air and filled the space. It was very calm and quiet in the apartment, so calm and quiet that Illya kept dropping off to sleep. He seemed to be half in a dreamland after coming back from that meeting with Waverly. Napoleon supposed that it was easy to fall asleep with the boredom of his helplessness and nothing to distract him visually.

'I could read something to you if you like,' Napoleon was offering. 'Anything.'

'No,' Illya said. He lifted his head and opened his damaged eyes. 'No, that's all right.'

Napoleon's stomach still lurched every time he saw those eyes. He wanted so badly to do something, to go back in time, make it right. But after so long as an agent he knew that sometimes things didn't go right. Sometimes there was just nothing to be done.

'Illya, will you call the rehabilitation school tomorrow?' he asked. 'Will you do that?'

Illya sighed and touched a hand to his eyes.

'This is it, isn't it?' he asked. 'I'm a blind man. That's who I am.'

Napoleon came to sit beside him, putting a hand snugly over his.

'It's one part of you now,' he said softly. 'Just one part. You're so much more.'

Illya smiled. 'Crack up. Suicidal. Redundant. I've been that too.'

Napoleon tried not to let worry overwhelm him.

' _Been?_ Past tense?'

Illya shrugged. Sitting there in his white poloneck and dark trousers, with his blond hair a little ruffled, he looked beautiful.

'I can't promise, Napoleon. I think it's getting a little easier, but it's still _so_ hard. It – it comes in waves. Sometimes I almost feel all right, and then it comes crashing over me again.'

Napoleon squeezed his hand over Illya's. It was so hard to know how to help from the outside. It was so hard to understand the reality of Illya's situation when his own eyesight was perfect. The only way he knew to help was to get Illya to help himself.

'Will you call the school?' he asked.

'I'll call the school,' Illya said.

Napoleon breathed out a long breath, and smiled. The relief was like sunshine. He put a hand on Illya's cheek, then leant across to gently kiss his lips. Illya melted into the kiss, deepening it, lengthening it, and he slipped his arms about Napoleon's neck.

'I want to feel you,' he murmured, his lips moving against Napoleon's. 'I want to touch you.'

'You want to – Are you ready for more?' Napoleon asked tentatively. He didn't want to overwhelm Illya. He had so much to think about

Illya's lips curved a little. 'Let's find out,' he said, kissing Napoleon some more, then tracing his fingertips over his earlobe in a way that made Napoleon shiver. Illya's mouth followed his fingers, the tip of his tongue touching Napoleon's skin.

'You taste perfect,' he murmured, and Napoleon smiled.

'Well, let me see how you taste,' he suggested, stroking Illya's hair and then moving his mouth down to kiss his neck, tasting the salt of his skin with little darts of his tongue. Clothes suddenly seemed like a ridiculous hindrance, and he slipped his fingers under the edge of Illya's poloshirt, feeling the heat of his torso beneath. He was about to ask if he could, but Illya sat forward in a way that was explicit enough, so Napoleon peeled the top from him and began to pay attention to his flat chest, to the peaks of his nipples and the lines of his ribs.

'Hey,' Illya said, putting his hand on Napoleon's arm and feeling his shirt sleeve. 'Not fair.'

So Napoleon took Illya's hands and put them to the open neck of his shirt, inviting him to unbutton it. And Illya did, carefully and slowly, slipping his fingers beneath the fabric to feel the flesh he was revealing. The fire kept radiating its heat into the room and it wasn't long before there was a small pile of discarded clothing dropped on the floor, and Napoleon took Illya by the hand and tugged him to his feet.

'How about we move this to the bedroom?' he asked.

Illya smiled.

'I think that would be perfect,' he said.

((O))

Illya didn't know Napoleon's bedroom so well. He had seen into it once or twice but had little reason to go in there, and he hadn't tried to learn the room as he had with the others. Now it felt like a great, unknown space. But Napoleon led him by the hand to the bed, and the bed was soft and clean, covered in cotton sheets that felt rich under his hands. He lay back onto the mattress and then Napoleon was there, coming over him, leaning down to kiss him, and the room around him ceased to matter.

Every time Napoleon's face came close to his he strained up closer to it. He caught his mouth with his own, felt the warm softness of his lips, the roughness of stubble on his cheek. He breathed in Napoleon's hot breath and savoured it, savoured that closeness that he felt he had been denied for all this time without seeing. He lifted a hand to touch his cheek, his brow, his ear, but it was his lips that were on fire with sensitivity, and he kissed him again, drowning in the feel of him, in the taste of his mouth and every puff of air. He had been starving for so long.

And now he felt Napoleon with every inch of him. He felt the heat of him, the silk of skin over hard muscles, the light tangle of hair trailing down his flat belly. God, he felt amazing. He felt perfect.

'Oh, I want – I want – ' he said, but he couldn't complete that sentence because he wanted it too much. He wanted so badly to see what he felt under his hands.

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'I know.'

He traced his fingers lower over that strong abdomen, swirling his fingers in the hair. And then his knuckles bumped something and he felt tentatively, and he found the hard, hot length of Napoleon's cock right there, standing up from a bed of tangled hair. Napoleon gave a little sigh, and Illya swept his fingertips down the length and touched the cool balls, felt their weight in his cupped hand. And it flooded over him suddenly that this was really Napoleon. It was so strange to be touching Napoleon in this intimate way.

'Hey, are you okay?' Napoleon asked as his hand stilled.

Illya smiled. 'Just – a little self-conscious suddenly,' he said.

Napoleon's fingers came from nowhere, stroking down his chest, all the way down until he was touching Illya's hardening cock, and a thrill ran through him.

'Okay, that helps,' he smiled. Napoleon's hand moved again and his entire pelvis thrilled in response, and he said, 'Yes, that helps. More of that. Do more of that, Napoleon.'

He sank into the pure sensory delight of Napoleon's expert touch. He seemed to know exactly where to put his hands, how hard or how softly to press or stroke. And then something so soft was touching the tip of his cock and he realised it was Napoleon's lips, kissing him ever so softly. He sighed and smiled, and Napoleon said, 'Have you any idea how beautiful this thing is?'

'I always thought it was rather average,' Illya replied in a pragmatic tone. 'It does what I need it to do.'

But then Napoleon's tongue was swirling about the tip and it didn't seem so wholly practical any more. He reached out to try to find Napoleon's, and couldn't work out his position.

'Just let me look after you,' Napoleon told him, and he licked down the length of flesh. Illya's legs fell further open, and suddenly something was touching the exquisitely sensitive pucker between his legs, and he gasped.

'Wha- What – ?' he began, and Napoleon stopped.

'It's all right,' he said gently.

It felt so sensitive, a feeling that shivered through his body, but he didn't know how to react. Surely this was wrong?

'It's all right,' Napoleon said again, but he took his finger away. 'Trust me, Illya, when or if you let me, you'll find it's the most amazing feeling in the world. There's nothing like it, whether you're giving or receiving. But only when you're ready.'

Illya took a deep breath. He didn't know what to make of his thoughts and didn't know what to make of his reaction to that touch, but he hadn't got where he was in life by shying away from new experiences.

'Show me,' he said.

Napoleon rested a hand on his chest, fingers spread out to catch the beat of his heart. 'Are you sure?' he asked.

'Yes,' Illya said. 'Show me.'

The finger came back, ever so gentle, just touching, stroking, making the muscle there thrill. Illya found himself letting his knees drop further, sighing softly. He needed to divorce his feeling that this was something one shouldn't do from the soft, thrilling touches. Napoleon moved away from him, went across the room, and then came back. The next touch was wet with something, slick and gliding. And then the fingertip was pressing through that tight hole, and Illya gasped, then gasped again as he felt the curious, shivering sensation of Napoleon's finger entering his body.

'Oh!' he said, and Napoleon stopped.

'You okay?' he asked solicitously.

Illya caught his breath and said, 'Yes. _Yes._ It's just – It feels – '

'Just relax,' Napoleon told him. 'The more you relax the easier it will be.'

Another finger joined the first, and Illya gasped again at the odd, unwonted sensation. There was a little burning, but the thrills shivering from that touch inside him were overlaying any sense of pain. He lay there and let Napoleon play with him, putting fingers inside him, stroking his achingly hard cock and his balls, kissing the soft skin of his belly and thighs. And then Napoleon said, 'Illya, are you happy for me to do this? Do you want me to do this?'

His head was deep in the soft pillow and the light was blurred above him, and all there was in the world was the feeling of Napoleon, touching him so tenderly and with such care. His treacherous mind asked him, _If I let him do this does that mean I'm gone? Does that mean I'm – what? A queer? A fag?_ But those fingers were still touching him and it felt so good, and he said in a voice that was more rough than he had meant, 'Do it. Please, god, Napoleon, do it.'

((O))

It felt like nothing he had experienced in his life. Afterwards he lay on the bed, staring into the blur, gasping in breath. He had come just from that sensation inside him, spattering over his own chest as Napoleon was deep inside him, holding onto his hips and making such beautiful, abstracted sounds of pleasure. It was so beautiful listening to Napoleon making those sounds, to feel Napoleon filling him, to feel Napoleon touching his body inside and out. For a few minutes he had felt taken away from everything but the sensations at the centre of him. And then Napoleon was lying there, panting, and his thickness was still inside Illya's body, Napoleon's chest was against his chest, he was kissing Illya lightly without moving his head, just kissing wherever his lips touched. And then he asked, 'Was that okay?' and Illya found he had forgotten how to speak.

'I – It – ' he stuttered. He felt as if he were floating on a cloud.

Napoleon kissed him again, and stroked his cheek.

'Come on,' he said, moving off Illya and catching hold of his hand.

His blindness came back in a rush. He had ceased to notice it, ceased to care. But then he was standing up, unsteady and reeling, and Napoleon had hold of his hand and had an arm around his back, and was guiding him so carefully out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. Everything was lost in the blur. There was the feeling of Napoleon touching him and the scent of cum, of his own cum on his chest. Napoleon let go and the shower hissed into life, and Napoleon took his hand again and said, 'Come on, get in. That's it, there's the edge of the tray.'

He was blind again, so blind. He leant against the tiled wall of the shower and let the water hiss around him, over his face, down his cheeks, hoping that Napoleon wouldn't be able to tell tears from the water. He wanted so badly to be able to see, to see Napoleon's body flushed from sex, to have seen his face when he came. He wanted to be able to see the water streaming around him. He wanted – just to see. To be able to see.

Napoleon's fingers stroked his cheek, and he smiled at the touch that brought him back to the reality around him.

'No dwelling,' Napoleon said, kissing him lightly where his fingers had been. 'No dwelling, okay?'

'Okay,' he said. He smiled again. 'Okay. No dwelling.'

He let Napoleon ever so carefully wipe him down, stroking the cum from his chest, the oil from his legs. Napoleon's cum was coming out of his body, and that felt so strange. There was a soreness there. It felt so strange. Had it been wrong? Had it been wrong to let Napoleon do that? But he thought of returning the favour, of easing himself into a place which he knew must be so tight and hot, and a thrill ran through him.

'It's all right,' Napoleon said, tracing fingertips down his face and then kissing him softly. He read Illya so well. 'It's okay, you know. It doesn't make you anything that you weren't before. It doesn't change you. It's just another way of finding pleasure.'

'You're a hedonist,' Illya murmured.

'Damn right I am. And when you're ready to do the same to me – '

The thrill went through him again. The thought of entering Napoleon like that…

'Now?' he asked.

Napoleon chuckled. 'Impetuous. No, not right now. Let's get clean,' he said. 'Let's call the rehabilitation school, and have some dinner. And then let's go back to bed.'

The thought of the rehabilitation school settled in Illya like a cold draught of water. When he was entwined with Napoleon his sight just didn't matter. But it _did_ matter. It mattered so much. It was such a heaviness, such a leaden thing over every aspect of his life. This was real, this was forever. This was his life.


	10. Chapter 10

'Okay, Illya. Steps here,' Napoleon said. 'Steps down. We're going into the subway.'

Illya pushed his foot forwards, feeling for the drop of ground that would indicate the first step.

'The rail's on your right. Got it?'

'Uh-huh,' he said, concentrating.

The rail was cold and smooth under his fingers and he took one step after another, ignoring the sounds of other people trooping down the stairs past him. Everyone seemed to be hurrying, but he would do this at his own pace, and Napoleon was there next to him to keep him from being jostled or pushed. He was glad he had Napoleon there, his arm very solid under Illya's hand.

The sounds of the busy street above started to be muffled as he went further down into the subway entrance, and then the handrail flattened out and he slid his foot forwards to find that the ground was now level.

'Uh, sorry, yeah, it's flat for about six feet,' Napoleon told him. 'Then down again. Okay?'

'Okay,' he said.

'Just follow the rail,' Napoleon told him. 'It goes right the way along.'

His stomach was clenching and making little lurches inside him. He had an appointment at the rehabilitation school across town, and that meant this was really true, he was really blind, he wasn't going to get better. There hadn't been a cab in sight, according to Napoleon, and the streets were packed because of some kind of parade or event, so they needed to take the subway.

The very idea of the subway was horrible. Illya had always been perfectly happy to travel on it, but that was when the trains and the drop at the edge of the platform and the crowds of people hadn't been invisible to him.

He had been out with Napoleon a few days ago and navigated Macy's with him through the throngs of Christmas shoppers. He had been proud of himself for managing, even though it had felt awful at first to be moving without sight in such a crowd. He had even left Napoleon's side, in the company of a shop assistant, long enough to buy him Christmas presents, but they had made the journey to and from the place in cabs, which were far more reassuring than the hustle of the subway.

'Down again,' Napoleon said, just before the stairs began again, and he felt where the rail started to slope again. 'All right. Another eight or ten steps and then level.'

There was a feeling above him. He didn't know if he were imagining it or not. It was as if he could feel the ceiling pressing down above him, the great weight of the city above that. It was a feeling of pressure all over him, as if the air itself were heavy.

He was imagining it, he was sure. He had never felt that before in the subway. He just didn't like this. He didn't like the sounds of the milling crowds that he couldn't see. He didn't like it when Napoleon moved away from him to get tickets and when he had to get through the turnstile and then wait for Napoleon to join him, feeling as though he were a very small animal lost on the plains.

'All right,' Napoleon said, letting Illya take his arm again. 'Come on, IK. We might just make the train.'

'It's busy,' Illya commented.

The sounds of people were everywhere. They echoed from the hard walls. Footsteps clattered on the hard floors. The air was full of the scents of rubber and burnt fuel and cold, and the perfume of women, the sweat of men. Somewhere someone was playing Christmas carols on a flute. The space was given shape and definition by all of those sounds.

'Yeah,' Napoleon said, and he sounded as if he were concentrating hard too. His hand was pressed over Illya's where Illya held his arm, as if he really wanted to grab hold of his friend to be sure he was safe. Illya stepped carefully, relying on the ground being level, and he thought how if he decided to attend the rehabilitation school he would probably get that true marker of being a blind man, a white cane, and that would be terrible and wonderful all at once.

'I don't want a dog,' he said.

'Huh?' Napoleon asked.

'I don't want a dog,' he repeated. 'I don't want a guide dog. I – '

'You know, it'd give you a lot of freedom,' Napoleon replied. 'I've seen people with seeing eye dogs. They can get about almost like – '

'Like normal people?' Illya asked.

'Like sighted people.'

'Napoleon, do you know what they did with dogs in Kyiv during the war?' Illya asked. He hardly let his memory go there, just let the fear rise in him quickly and then pushed it away. 'Do you know what it was like as a little boy, going out to try to find food, and those – those men everywhere, and their dogs that were trained to kill?'

Napoleon was silent. He knew why Illya didn't like dogs. All Illya could feel of him was the strength and solidity of his arm, and his hand over Illya's. And then the sounds of the subway came back in a rush, and he breathed in that burnt-rubber smelling air, and Napoleon patted at his hand and said, 'This is the platform, Illya. The train's due any minute. Actually, I think I can – '

He started moving forward. The crowd was pressing around them. Illya asked nervously, 'Where's the platform edge?'

But then Napoleon said in an undertone, 'Uh-oh.'

'What?' Illya asked instantly, but the air moved suddenly in a cool rush. The train was screaming in to the station, the air was filled with clamour, and he only just heard Napoleon say, 'Thrushies.'

His stomach tightened. Something warred within him between the adrenaline of the life he so missed, and the knowledge that he was so utterly vulnerable. The train was coming to a halt and people were pushing, and Napoleon was pushing Illya too, saying in a brisk voice, 'Gap, Illya, step. Get on board. That's it. You – '

And then the doors were closing. Napoleon's hand wasn't there any more. Illya was on the train with people pressed around him, and Napoleon's hand was gone.

'Napoleon?' he asked. 'Napoleon, are you here?'

Silence. If Napoleon had been on the train he would have answered. He must be on the platform. He strained to hear something of what was happening out there. He heard someone scream beyond the doors. But the train jerked and started moving even as he turned back towards the door, and he was being taken away from the station, surrounded by people, the train swaying and rattling as it took him further and further away from Napoleon.

He took a moment to steady himself. He couldn't let himself dissolve into panic. He tried to find something to hold onto but his hand touched what felt like someone's coat. He was packed around by people because the train was busy with Christmas shoppers.

'Can someone help me?' he asked clearly into the blur.

Feet moved a little on the floor, and the floor rocked as the train moved. Conversations continued between passengers. He felt for his communicator pen and took it from his inside pocket. He assembled it quickly and tried to open a channel, but was met with static. He was too far underground.

'Can someone help me?' he asked again.

The train lurched and swayed and he stumbled. There was a little lull in the chatter but then it started again. He clenched his hands at his sides, fighting with the terrible sense of helplessness that was washing over him. He was almost certain Napoleon would be all right. Napoleon was good at taking care of himself. But he, Illya, was trapped on a subway train, alone, and although he knew why Napoleon had pushed him aboard, pushing him to safety, he wished he were still on the platform with Napoleon.

He took in a breath and mustered his most stentorian voice.

'I am blind and I need someone to help me.' He reached out, feeling, and caught the cloth of a coat again. 'Sir? Madam? I really need – '

His hands were brushed off, and a man said, 'Hey, fella. Come on. What do you expect _me_ to do?'

 _Help me_ , he thought desperately. Emotion swelled. He just wanted help. He wanted to hit out and to weep and to scream all at the same time. This was just terrible. It was awful.

'I need _help_ ,' he said again. 'I'm not asking for – '

Then there was the noise of someone moving, muttered comments from others, and then a hand on his arm, and a young man said, 'Sure, I can help you. I'm sorry you've gotten onto a car reserved for _assholes_.' He said the last word with very loud emphasis. If Illya hadn't been so stressed he would have laughed.

A hand descended on his other arm, and held him steady as the train lurched again.

'Look, here's a pole,' the man said, guiding his hand. 'Hold on.'

He wrapped his hand around the metal and held on. He gave a small smile, but the relief inside was tremendous. When he spoke he minimised his Russian accent as far as possible and gave over to his learnt English cut glass tones that he could draw on at will.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I really do need help. I was separated from my friend at the station back there. I haven't been blind for long, and I – ' He faltered. He didn't want to verbalise how utterly helpless he was. 'I need to get off at the next stop,' he said. 'I need to get in contact with my friend.'

'Well, it looked like he was getting into some kind of fight,' the man said.

'You saw – ' Illya calmed his voice then from the intemperate eagerness. 'My friend is a law enforcement agent,' he said. 'He pushed me onto the train so as to keep me safe, but – '

'Ah, yeah,' the man said in a wry tone. 'You ain't exactly safe, huh? Sure, I'm on my way home anyway. I can take you off at the next stop and help you. We're coming in now.'

Illya breathed out in relief. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Really, thank you.'

'No problem, bud. Here we are,' he said as the train drew to a halt. 'Come on. Door's over here. Yeah, excuse _you,_ asshole,' he said to someone else, and Illya internalised a smile. 'There's a bit of a step down. Careful there.'

Illya stumbled a little over the step out of the train and his stomach lurched. It was as if he were a child again, terrified of that dark gap between carriage and platform. But then he was on the solid platform, being guided through the pushing crowd of people, and his companion was calling out, 'Hey, buddy. Yeah, I got a guy here, he's blind and he's lost his friend. Can you help him?'

'Oh, yeah, sure, sure,' another male voice replied. There were other hands on his arms then, and the first man said, 'This guy works for the station. You'll be all right with him.'

'Thank you,' Illya said. 'Thank you so much.'

The man patted his arm. 'No problem. None at all. Good luck.'

'Now, sir,' the other man said, and Illya turned his attention to him. He had to assume he was a genuine station employee. He had to trust the eyes of the man who had helped him. The thought kept running through his mind that this could be an elaborate Thrush ruse. Maybe he couldn't trust anyone. But he _had_ to trust someone. Thrush weren't usually this subtle.

'Guy said you lost your friend?' the man continued.

'Yes, Mr – er – '

'Jones. Name's Ed Jones. Come with me, won't you? Let's get out of the crowd, huh?'

'Thank you, Mr Jones,' Illya said. It was no good trying to hide his abject relief. It was too great. 'Can I hold your arm? It's easier.'

'Sure,' the man agreed readily, then he asked, 'If you don't mind me asking – can you see at all? You got no cane?'

Illya smiled thinly as he rearranged his grip. 'No, I can't see at all. Just some light. I don't have a cane yet. I've only been blind for a few weeks.'

'Jeez,' the man said, his voice rich with sympathy. 'So it must be scary, huh? Don't you worry. I'll get you out of this crowd.'

'Thank you,' Illya said. Yes, it was scary. It was terrifying. He had been in so many life-threatening situations in the past. He had faced so many things. But being here, in the push and clamour of the subway, without Napoleon, without any ability to help himself, was terrible.

'We're coming to steps here,' the man told him.

Illya had to assume they were going up, and they were. The man with him was very attentive, chattering the whole time about what was around them as he took him up multiple flights, then into a room, where he said, 'Sit down, Mr – '

'Kuryakin,' Illya said quickly. 'Mr Kuryakin. Thank you.'

It felt like such a relief to be in that chair, in a quiet room. He realised that he was shaking, ever so slightly. He listened to the small sounds of the room, to the man who had brought him here saying to someone else, 'Hey, Pete. This is Mr Kuryakin. He's blind and he got separated from his friend. Brought him up here. Hey, Mr Kuryakin, can I call someone for you?'

'Oh – Well, let me try this first.' Illya patted his fingers at his coat and then drew out his communicator. He assembled it and said swiftly, 'Open channel D. Napoleon?'

'Illya!'

Relief flooded through him, so huge that he sagged back against the chair.

'Napoleon, I could kill you!' he growled.

'Never mind that. Where are you?' Napoleon responded instantly. 'Listen, there were only two guys and I brought them down. Got a team picking them up right now. Where are you? Are you on the train?'

'My communicator wouldn't work on the train. It was too far down,' Illya said rather tartly. 'I'm at the next station, Napoleon. Can you _please_ come and get me?'

'I'll be there as soon as I can, Illya,' Napoleon promised. 'Just sit tight, okay? Don't worry. I'll be there.'

Illya sat tight. He answered the amazed questions from the station employees about the tiny telephone in a pen, and he accepted the cup of rather weak black coffee that was pressed on him. He parried the questions and sympathy over his blindness. He wished that he could just be back at Napoleon's apartment, on the sofa there, in quiet and safety. Then there was a knock at the door and when it opened Napoleon said, 'Illya!'

It was a beautiful sound. Illya rose to his feet and Napoleon came and touched his arm, and Illya wanted to take hold of him and hug him, to cling to him like a child reunited with a parent. He hated that anything could make him feel like that.

'I'm sorry, Illya. I really am sorry,' Napoleon kept saying as he walked with him away from the office.

Illya was holding onto his arm with both hands, holding tighter than usual.

'So you should be,' he said tartly. 'Napoleon, have you any idea – '

'Okay, stairs down. I know. I'm sorry,' Napoleon said again as Illya found the edge and started down. 'But listen, there were two Thrush thugs, both with guns, and I needed you out of the line of fire.'

'You couldn't just tell me to duck?'

Napoleon sighed. 'Illya, you may not be an active agent now, but you have a storehouse of information on U.N.C.L.E. in your head. Uh, last step. It's level for six feet, then – Yeah, starting down again now.'

'Thanks,' Illya murmured.

'Illya, if they took you, tortured you – ' Napoleon started again. 'It was you they were after, you know.'

Illya smiled very thinly. 'Well, I suppose I wouldn't be able to make one of my timely and miraculous escapes,' he admitted. 'I know, Napoleon. I know you did the right thing. But it was – '

'Scary, huh?' Napoleon asked.

'Yes,' Illya admitted very quietly. 'Yes, Napoleon. When you can't see – '

Napoleon put a hand over his.

'I know,' he said. 'I know, Illya. All right. Flat. That's it. And you're just coming to the edge of the steps again. But listen, do you feel all right for getting to your appointment?'

'Yes,' Illya said very firmly. 'Yes, it's important.'

'Good. Well, we're not too late. I asked one of the girls at headquarters to call through and explain. So maybe things are going to start being less scary, huh?'

'Maybe,' Illya replied, but it was hard to imagine how a white stick in his hand would push back all of the horrors of the city. He didn't want to go on to this appointment. He wanted to go home and curl up and pretend that none of this was real. But he knew he needed to do it.

'Flat,' Napoleon said at the last step, then stroked his hand lightly and said quietly, 'I know. I know you want to go home.'

Illya looked up in surprise. 'How did you know that?'

'Steps here again,' Napoleon said. 'Down. Yeah, that's it. How did I know?' he continued as Illya felt the first step. 'Illya, it's written all over your face. And I don't blame you. But you need to do this.'

Illya growled low in his throat. 'I know,' he said. 'I _am_ doing it. Oh – '

Napoleon hadn't warned him of the bottom of the stairs again, and he jolted on the suddenly level ground.

'Sorry,' Napoleon said. 'I'm sorry. No, it's level now. We're back on the platform. We'll get on this train and we'll be there before you know it.'

Illya knew he was holding more tightly to Napoleon's arm than he would like to, but he didn't try to loosen his grip. People were all around them, the place echoed with noise, air breezed past his face with the movement of the rumbling trains. He didn't intend to lose Napoleon again.

((O))

'Well, Mr Kuryakin, it's nice to finally meet you.'

Mr Wilcox had a warm, friendly voice. It was firm and cheerful, and Illya wondered rather cynically if he were used to pitching such a cheerful tone because he was used to welcoming scared and dispirited people to this place.

Illya held out his hand and the man gripped it in a handshake that was similar to his voice. Firm and cheerful. He distrusted firm and cheerful.

'Mr Solo, if you come back in about two hours we should be almost done,' Mr Wilcox said. 'Then we'll run through some things with you that will help you to help Mr Kuryakin.'

Illya opened his mouth as Napoleon said, 'Oh, I – er – I expected to stay – '

'That's all right,' Mr Wilcox said, and the firmness in his voice started to outweigh the cheerful. 'There's a café across the street, a good diner down on the corner, and an art gallery next to it. Thank you, Mr Solo.'

'Oh, well – ' Napoleon put a hand on Illya's arm then and said, 'I'll see you in a while, IK. Okay?'

'Okay,' Illya echoed, and then Napoleon was gone. He stood there uneasily. He had no idea of where he was, what was around him. Perhaps this was Wilcox's office. Perhaps a large room, perhaps small. He hadn't been told, and he didn't like it.

'Well, Mr Kuryakin,' Wilcox said, and his voice was rather more natural. 'It sounds like you had something of an adventure getting here?'

'Something like that,' Illya murmured. 'Yes.'

'Well, you're here now, at least. Would you like to take a seat?'

'Er, I – ' he began, floundering.

'May I touch you?' Wilcox asked, and he nodded.

The man touched the back of Illya's hand with the back of his and said, 'You can take my arm,' and when Illya did he walked a few steps forward. Illya felt the arm he was holding reach forward. 'Now, my hand's on the back of your chair,' Wilcox said. 'Slide your hand down my arm to feel the chair, then you can reach down to the seat to know where you're sitting.'

Illya did as instructed. He found the chair and felt down the wooden slats of the back and then the smooth wooden seat.

'Learning starts early here,' he commented with a wry smile as he sat. He reached out and felt the edge of what might be a desk in front of him.

'It's never too early to learn, Mr Kuryakin. I expect you've done a lot of learning already. May I call you Illya? You can call me Martin.'

'Oh, yes,' Illya agreed, although he still felt intensely awkward.

'It's never too early to learn,' the man repeated. 'Illya, I've read the details of your application. You were very recently blinded and I understand that things must be very difficult for you at the moment. It must seem rather hopeless.'

Illya gave a crooked smile, head bowed. That smile couldn't possibly show the lurching feeling of despair inside.

'Yes, it does rather,' he murmured.

'It will be a long process,' Wilcox said. He touched Illya's shoulder warmly, then moved away from him and sat down on the other side of the desk. 'I can't promise it will be easy for you. It never is. You have a long way to come in physical and emotional adaptation. The attack was traumatic, your blindness was very sudden, and your life must seem drastically changed from the life of an agent. Expect to go through the whole gamut of emotions, and don't feel any the less of yourself for it.'

Illya wasn't sure what to say. He hadn't known this man long enough to open up to him about his feelings, and it was rather odd to feel that Wilcox had so much insight on his experience.

'Well, I'm just noting down a few things on your admission papers,' Wilcox said, the nib of a pen scratching on paper. 'And then I'll take you round the place. You're going to get to know this building like the back of your hand. You'll be able to walk around it without a guide, probably sooner than you expect. You'll learn to read and write braille. Some people find it difficult, particularly the elderly, but you're young and you have a quick mind. You'll learn to cook, and – '

'To _cook_?' Illya repeated, his head jerking up.

'Yes, to cook,' Wilcox replied calmly. 'I don't know if you could cook before but you will be able to after this course. You will learn every particular of looking after yourself. Identifying your clothes, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, eating neatly. We'll set you up with templates for hand writing and filling in cheques and so on. You'll learn how to touch type conventionally as well as in braille. I understand you're likely to return to office-based work so that will be a focus. You will learn techniques for mobility and orientation, including how to use a long cane, but you'll learn that using your cane is just the tip of the iceberg. You probably feel like you've lost a whole world right now, Illya,' he said kindly, 'but you will find it again, I promise.'

'I won't – ' Illya began, but his voice choked a little. He cleared his throat and said, 'I won't be able to see. Nothing you can do here will help me see.'

'No, nothing we can do here will do that,' Wilcox acknowledged. 'And we won't teach you to expect anything beyond your capability. But you will find yourself far more capable than you think. You'll be able to get around the city, take cabs and buses, use the subway – '

Illya shuddered a little. His experience of the subway this morning had been nightmarish.

'You'll be able to shop for groceries and other things you need. You'll quickly build up a map of your local area and you'll be quite proficient at navigating around it.'

Illya couldn't stop a little snort escaping. Wilcox's chair scraped on the hard floor – linoleum, Illya thought – and came around to him.

'You don't believe me, I know,' he said, touching Illya's shoulder again. 'But it doesn't make it any less true. You'll find that blindness isn't a prison sentence. It's an inconvenience, but you'll surmount it in almost every aspect of your life. I know blind people who go mountain climbing, kayaking, who compete in marathons. You _will_ learn to live with this. Now, come on, and I'll show you around, introduce you to the teachers.'

So Illya stood and took his arm and followed him as he moved.

'We'll get that over as fast as possible,' Wilcox continued, 'because in your two hours here today I want to get a cane cut to suit your height and get you used to the basics of using it. You'll be able to take a cane home with you today so you can get as much practice as possible, although at this stage I want you to stick to using it with while you're walking with a partner. So we'll train you in the first basics of using that today, and then we'll start training you in earnest when you begin on the course.'

It all seemed like a lot. He felt as though he were dropping off the edge of something. This man was talking as though he were really blind, as though he were always going to be blind. And he was. He knew he was, but the knowledge of that swept over him at intervals like pounding waves.

'Illya,' Wilcox said softly, pausing in his step. 'It's all right to be scared. It's all right to not know what to feel. You're going to go through the gamut. But we'll help you, I promise. It will get easier.'

He wanted to protest _I'm not scared_ , but he was. He was so scared. He was scared of his whole future, of his blind future.

Wilcox started walking again, and Illya followed, breathing in the scent of this building, listening to the sounds of their footsteps on the floor, and the more distant sounds of voices, doors opening and closing. He heard the sound – yes, it must be the sound of a cane tapping. That would be his sound too, soon. He tried not to be disgusted by that sound. He followed the arm that guided him, and tried not to break down.


	11. Chapter 11

He sat on a cushioned chair in what he had been told was a little recreation room, waiting for Napoleon. The handle of his new cane was between his palms. He kept running his fingertips over it, trying to work out exactly what it might look like, reconciling his vague memories of others he had seen with canes with what he felt. It was white, of course. White, slim, light, made of fibreglass so it was light and sensitive, and long enough that when he was standing still it reached from the floor to his chin. Apparently the handle was green. There was a strap at the top of the handle. He wasn't supposed to put his wrist through it when he was using it, but it would give him a way to hang it up or hold it when he wasn't using it.

His wrist ached from walking up and down, using the cane to find kerbs, to feel unevenness in the ground, to orient himself with the wall and to find steps. But it had felt amazing. It had felt so strange and so freeing to be able to let go of his guide and just walk. It had taken courage and confidence to trust the cane, but he had done it.

He felt buzzing with all that he had learnt. He had a bag at his side with various things in it; the blanks that Wilcox had spoken about for filling in cheques and guiding his handwriting along straight lines. There were a few cards for him to start learning braille, which he needed to practice with every day. He needed to buy a shoulder bag or rucksack so he could carry things around with him without giving up the use of one of his hands. He needed to think about whether he wanted to buy a folding cane as a spare. So many things. So much to think about…

The door on the other side of the space opened and closed.

'Hey, Illya.'

He turned at Napoleon's voice, and got to his feet, smiling, trying to get his hand out of the loop of the cane and pick up the carrier bag and orient himself to the voice.

'Napoleon.'

'Well, I've had coffee and cake, and I've looked at some truly terrible art,' Napoleon said, coming across the space to him and touching his arm. 'How's it been with you?'

'Mr Wilcox wanted to speak with you,' Illya said, trying to remember where the door to the room was in relation to the way he was facing now, and where Wilcox's office was in relation to that. 'I think – '

'Yeah, I saw his office on the way in,' Napoleon said.

It was so easy for Napoleon. So quick. He just had to look about, read a nameplate, and he knew where he was. He took Napoleon's arm and wondered for a moment how to manage the cane and the plastic bag, but then Napoleon took the bag for him and all he had to worry about was walking. He felt intensely self-conscious using the cane. It tapped so loudly on the hard floor, and he didn't really need it here, did he, holding onto Napoleon? But it told him about the coffee table he was navigating around as Napoleon took him sideways, and it touched the legs of other chairs, and warned him of the door.

'That's pretty nifty, huh?' Napoleon asked, and Illya smiled.

'Nifty, yes,' he echoed, and remembered a Caribbean island, martinis and baccarat tables and the glitter and excitement of being mid-mission. For a moment his heart ached, and he felt as if he had lost so, so much.

But he followed Napoleon through the door and across the lobby, and into Wilcox's office when the man answered Napoleon's knock. He sat there while Wilcox gave a brief recap of what Illya had learnt and explained the things which Napoleon himself could do to help Illya, and then took them both out to meet with a tutor, who gave Napoleon advice on how to be a good guide. Then Napoleon said, 'You want a cup of coffee? Then we'll get a cab home.'

Illya's instinct was to say, _No, I'm tired, it's been a long day_. And it had been a long day. But that wasn't his only reason for reticence, and he needed to get over his discomfort at being seen like this in public. This was his life now. So he said, 'Yes, coffee would be good. In the café you found?'

'Yeah, it's just across the street. I think it's a bit of a haunt for – Well, it's so close to the school.'

'For blind people,' Illya said, following Napoleon from the enclosure of the building to the chill of the street. The cane tip slipped from the smooth indoor floor to the roughness of concrete. 'You can say that, Napoleon. For blind people. People like me.'

'All right,' Napoleon said, pressing a hand over his. 'Yes. For blind people. I saw a few blind people while I was in there. They must have gotten there on their own. They left on their own, went back to the school. So – '

Illya smiled. He knew what Napoleon was trying to say, however inelegantly. He was trying to give him hope. He followed Napoleon across the street and tried to imagine doing it himself. He tried to take careful notice of what he could hear and what he could feel, and where the café was in relation to the school, and wondered when he would be capable of getting there on his own.

((O))

'Hey,' Napoleon said.

Illya's head jerked upwards. He was sitting on the sofa while the television chattered lightly in the background, and as Napoleon spoke he moved his head confusedly, blinking.

'Oh. I must have dropped off,' he murmured. 'Sorry. I get so drowsy sometimes with nothing to look at.'

'Yeah, I figured,' Napoleon replied with a smile. He dropped down onto the sofa next to his partner and touched his hand. 'I brought you a glass of sherry. You want?'

'Oh, thank you.'

Illya took the glass, and sipped.

'Tired?' Napoleon asked.

'It was a busy day,' Illya replied.

'Very,' Napoleon said. 'A Thrush attack and your first time on the subway and this orientation session all within a few hours of each other. So,' he asked tentatively. 'You've definitely made up your mind?'

He thought that Illya must have. When he had returned to the rehabilitation facility Napoleon had been so focussed on making sure he remembered all that he was told that he hadn't asked Illya if he'd signed up for the course, and somehow he hadn't thought to even in the café afterwards. But Illya had come home with that long, light white cane and had used it rather self-consciously as they walked. He had said very little, though.

'Yes,' Illya said eventually. 'Yes, I've made up my mind. I'm enrolled in the school. I start officially on Monday.'

'Monday,' Napoleon echoed with some relief.

He was back to work in two days and he hated to think of leaving Illya alone to stew in the apartment while he was gone every day. Waverly had promised to try to keep him to office or local work, but he still dreaded leaving Illya. Then another worry crossed his mind.

'How will you – uh – how are you going to get there and back while I'm at work?' he asked.

Illya smiled. 'Cabs, Napoleon,' he said gently. 'I'll take cabs. Over the weekend I'm going to make sure I can get safely down to the street and back again without help. I want to practice using the telephone and learn a couple of the cab companies' numbers. I need to learn to set the alarm in the apartment too, and I want to do some work learning the coins and separating off some notes so I can pay the driver and make sure he's not fleecing me.'

Napoleon smiled at this sudden sense of purpose in Illya. It was beautiful to see.

'You'll take your communicator,' he said, worried at the thought of Illya venturing out alone after today's abduction attempt.

'Always,' Illya promised. 'I'd take my gun if I could. Don't worry, Napoleon.'

'No, all right,' Napoleon murmured. Of course he would worry. He determined to ask Waverly if he could spare a couple of minor agents to keep an eye on Illya as he travelled, at least for a few days. Illya need never know, and it was good practice for fledgling agents. Perhaps he could get Illya to wear a homing pin too – just in case. He had come down so hard on the Thrushies that had gone after Illya today that he hoped a message had been sent rippling through their ranks, but he couldn't be sure of Illya's safety.

'Oh, Mr Wilcox asked if you could come in for a few sessions too,' Illya added. 'He said it would be very helpful. Since I'm living with you it would really help if you know the best ways of helping me.'

'Well, of course,' Napoleon said quickly. 'I'll learn everything that's necessary.'

'A mobility instructor will come to the apartment too, for a few sessions, to give advice on alterations and so on.'

'Alterations?' Napoleon asked, feeling momentarily worried.

'Modifications, perhaps. Ways to mark the knobs on the stove so I can use it, for example. That kind of thing.'

'Oh, that kind of thing,' Napoleon echoed, trying not to feel too concerned at the thought of Illya using the stove without sight. 'And that cane,' he said. 'It helps?'

Illya smiled then, and a light came into his face that Napoleon hadn't seen in too long.

' _Yes_ ,' he said with feeling. 'I never knew... I didn't expect it to help so much. Some people have ones that are even longer – but I need to be more used to cane travel for that. You can get folding ones, Abigail says – she's my mobility teacher – but they're heavier and don't transmit the vibrations so well. Heavier...' He laughed softly. 'This one isn't heavy at all, but my wrist _aches_ from using it. She had me walking up and down inside for an hour.'

Napoleon put his hand tenderly on Illya's right wrist.

'I'll get used to it,' Illya assured him, putting a hand over Napoleon's. 'It's a question of practice. That's all. It's all a question of practice.'

A note of weariness entered Illya's voice, and Napoleon lifted his wrist and kissed it on the delicate blue-veined underside.

'You excel at everything you do,' he said. 'You'll excel at this.'

Illya gave a thin little smile. 'There's so much to learn.'

Napoleon stroked the hair at his temple.

'This from the man with a PhD in Quantum Mechanics. You'll do it. You'll do just fine.'

'They showed me some braille today.' Illya shook his head. 'I don't know how I'll ever read that.'

'You'll do that too,' Napoleon promised.

Illya rubbed his fingertips together in a contemplative way. 'I could feel the dots. I could feel they were different, that each character was different. But it's so hard to tell the placement of the dots, the – ' He sighed tiredly, closing his eyes and shaking his head. 'It seems impossible. I can't imagine being able to read that way. I can't imagine ever being able to read. I miss reading, Napoleon. I miss – I miss _so_ much...'

Napoleon stroked his hair and kissed his hand again.

'I know,' he said. 'I know you've lost so much.'

'I miss such crazy little things sometimes,' he said with a small laugh. 'Looking into a cup of coffee. Edges of things – when you see a real definite sharp edge between one thing and another. I miss shadows. You know, when you're walking on a bright day and it's early, so your shadow stretches out and makes you look like a giant. Seeing the moon. Things far away that you can't hear or touch. I miss that. And I still wake up expecting to see. Every morning, even just for a split second. Then I remember.'

'I know,' Napoleon said again. He had seen that moment on Illya's face as he woke up. 'I can hardly imagine how hard it must be. But you're going to learn so much and it's going to get easier. You've started that today, and you're going to keep going forward. Don't think about it all now. It's been a very, _very_ long day, and you've done enough.'

Illya leant his head against Napoleon's shoulder, and Napoleon stroked his arm.

'I know it has,' Illya said. 'I know. I'm sorry. Really, it's been good. It just feels like a lot to learn.'

'It is a lot to learn,' Napoleon said softly. 'And you'll learn it all. But one thing at a time, bit by bit. It'll be broken down, and you'll make it. You _will_ make it. But you've learned enough for today. Come on, come to bed.'

Illya lifted an eyebrow. ' _Your_ bed?'

' _Yes_ , my bed. I want to lie in bed with you. Come on.'

So Illya put his glass down, felt for his cane, then smiled and laid it down again. Napoleon watched him in that moment of indecision. He supposed Illya was going to get used to when and where he would want or need the cane. Then Illya held out his hand.

'Take me to bed, then.'

((O))

They lay down together under a thick comforter, and Illya wondered lazily if there were snow falling outside. Napoleon moved closer, his bare skin coming to harbour against Illya's bare skin, his head coming to lay on Illya's shoulder. Illya touched his fingers into his thick, soft hair and turned his head sideways, smelling the scents of Napoleon's hair, of brylcreem, and of the deeper, natural scent of his skin beneath.

He lay there, breathing slowly, his mind a whirl of all he had been taught today. The basics of using the cane, how to extend his index finger down the handle to best feel the vibrations, how to alternate its sweeps with his footsteps so he was always covering the ground he was about to step onto. How to hold his arm before his face or his body to protect himself most effectively from walking into something if he needed to. How to hear the difference between a flat wall to the side of him and the gap of an open door. There had been so much in those short two hours.

He tried to let all those whirling thoughts settle, and just focus on the human scents of Napoleon, on the soft noise of his breathing, on how he could feel the thud of his heart beneath the skin and muscle and curving ribs of his chest. It was so strange how this had come from his blindness, how from that terrible moment in Stockholm he had lost so much, but gained this incredible, intimate deepening of his love for Napoleon. Occasionally he felt a little lurching jolt, fearing that he had let this happen because he had been lost and helpless, or that Napoleon had instigated it for similar reasons. But more often he was sure that it just felt right, that it was the final inevitable movement in a relationship that was already so close. They fit so perfectly together.

He let his lips touch the top of Napoleon's head, and remembered the almost-black colour of his hair. He remembered the brown of his eyes and the contours of his lips. His nose that was just a little more rounded at the end than a sculptor would choose for perfect masculine beauty, but which was just right, to Illya's memory. He wanted to see Napoleon's face so much.

'Hey, beautiful,' Napoleon said, shifting, moving his head away a little, then touching Illya's cheek with his fingertips.

'You never used to be so complimentary in your nicknames,' Illya said.

'Well, things are different now. I can't call you _filthy_. You're delectably clean. What should I call you?'

Illya grunted. 'Nothing,' he said after a moment. 'Just kiss me.'

So Napoleon's lips settled on his, and he lost himself in the depths of the kiss.

'Tomorrow I want to get a tree,' Napoleon said when they parted.

'Huh?' Illya asked.

'A Christmas tree,' Napoleon told him. 'We're going to go out shopping for a Christmas tree.'

'Oh,' Illya said.

He thought of the glittering spectacle of Christmas trees, of how New York looked every holiday season with those trees everywhere, sparkling and adorned. He remembered the New Year trees of his youth. So Napoleon would bring one of those trees home, and he wouldn't be able to see it… A little spear of pain pierced him.

'I'll try to find lights bright enough that you can see them,' Napoleon continued. 'I'll get those lights and I'll hang peppermint candy canes and gingerbread cookies and popcorn balls on the branches. And bells. I'll get little bells that will jingle, and – '

'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya said. 'Thank you.'

He appreciated what Napoleon was trying to do so deeply, even if he didn't think the tree would have half the wonder for him that they used to have. The fact that Napoleon was trying so hard made him flush with love.

'I'm going to cook you Christmas treats too, Illya,' Napoleon said with excitement in his voice. 'I know you won't be able to see the tree, but you'll smell the pine, and I'm going to fill this apartment with such smells of cooking that you'll need a knife to cut through the air.'

'You're trying to make me fat?' he asked in a gruff tone, but he was pleased, and he knew that Napoleon would be able to tell he was pleased.

'I'm trying to make you happy,' Napoleon said.

Illya smiled. Right here, with Napoleon snuggled so close against him and the scent of him in his nostrils, with his arm around Napoleon and the covers over them warmly, and in the knowledge that he was safe and loved, he was happy. He could close his eyes and be happy.


	12. Chapter 12

The cane was such an amazing thing. He had felt it from the moment he took it in his hand in the school and walked across a room without waiting for the terrible jar of being brought up by furniture or a wall. But that had been such a small thing, walking across a room, and the huge whole of New York was outside, a place which had always been so easily accessible to him and had felt cut off from him for weeks.

He had been at the school for half a week and he knew that his learning so far was just the tip of the iceberg, but the feeling of independence was growing already, and with it grew his confidence. True, he got dressed in clothes that Napoleon had picked out for him, but he made himself tea and brought a cup to Napoleon in bed, too, saying, 'I would have made coffee but I couldn't find the tin.'

He didn't mention that he wasn't quite sure about using the percolator. It was enough that he couldn't find the coffee tin. It was enough that he had practised so hard at pouring liquids so that he could safely pour the boiling water, enough that he had managed to carry to cups into the bedroom without spilling any of the tea. It was a small but wonderful triumph.

Napoleon, half asleep, not due into work until a little later, grunted and shifted on the mattress and then seemed to come awake suddenly, saying, 'Illya, you used the kettle?'

'Yes, I used the kettle,' Illya said with a hint of impatience. 'Yes, I managed the matches and I got the right ring and I made sure it was turned off again afterwards. Do you want this tea or not?'

'Oh, yeah, thanks,' Napoleon said, and he took the cup, and Illya smiled. He felt proud of himself for using the kettle, and glad he had managed it without Napoleon hovering over him.

'I know you'd rather have coffee,' he said, sitting down on his side of the bed.

'No, no, tea's great,' Napoleon countered. 'Do you – ah – do you want me to come make you something to eat, or are you going to do that too?'

'I had some toast, thank you,' Illya said. 'I need to go soon, I think. Do you know what time it is?'

'It's – er – Yeah, it's almost half past eight. When's your cab due?'

'Half past eight,' Illya said with a wry grin, and he swallowed half of his cup of tea and put it down on the night stand. 'I can't finish this. I need to go. The cab will be waiting...'

'I can walk you down,' Napoleon offered.

'In pyjamas and a dressing gown?' Illya shook his head. 'I walked myself down yesterday. I'll be fine. You'll remember to meet me after work, won't you?'

'Of course I will,' Napoleon promised. 'I'll see you in the café. Now go, before the cab drives off without you.'

There was such an odd jumble of feelings in him as he reached out to catch Napoleon's fingers briefly, then hurried out of the room to find his cane by the front door, grab his coat and wallet and keys, and leave the apartment. The cane made it so much easier. He could walk down the hall relatively quickly and find the elevator and then make his way out of the lobby and down the steps to the street. As he stepped onto the pavement, turning his head and listening, a car horn sounded, and then a man called, 'Hey, mister, was it you who called for a cab?'

He lifted his hand and called out, 'Yes, it was me,' and started towards the sound of that voice, trying to remember if there might be a tree in his way. Before he had got there the driver had got out of the cab and was touching his arm and opening the door and saying, 'Watch your head there, buddy. Okay? Okay. Let's go.'

Such an odd jumble of feelings. He constantly felt as if he were leaving something behind. The further he got from the familiarity of the apartment the more frequent that sudden dropping feeling was, a kind of subconscious moment of his brain asking, _Are you mad? Do you even know where you are?_ But there were good feelings too. He had got himself up and dressed and breakfasted and to the cab all without help. He was travelling across town alone. He was being driven by someone else, but everyone took cabs. He was managing to get somewhere alone, and he was managing it for the third morning in a row.

He paid the fare when they arrived and the driver asked, 'You want me to help you inside?'

He wanted to say no, as he had done to Napoleon, but he just couldn't. He didn't feel he could trust himself. He had walked up to the door of this place three times already this week, with a guide. Napoleon had driven him the first morning and walked him into the place, and the cab drivers had helped him the next two days. He had wanted to manage alone this morning, but the insecurity crowded in and he nodded and said, 'Yes, could you take me to the door?'

Next week, perhaps. Next week he would make it from the cab to the door alone. Or perhaps tomorrow. Or perhaps –

'Actually,' he said before the driver could get out, 'Can you just tell me where I am in relation to the door?'

'We're just a few yards down the road,' the driver said, and Illya picked his cane up off the floor of the cab.

'Which way?' he asked, and the driver said, 'Er, get out my side and you need to go right. Just a few yards. Listen, you sure you don't want me to take you – '

'Thank you,' Illya said. 'I'm sure.'

He touched the cane to the ground and felt the roughness of concrete and stepped out. He had stepped straight onto the pavement, avoiding the kerb. He heard the cab drive away behind him and he swallowed his insecurity and walked across the pavement and found the little lip that marked the boundary between the pavement and the little open area in front of the building. A few steps along the pavement and the lip stopped, but the smooth paving of the path was evident, different from the rougher pavement. Finding that path was the only anxiety and once he was on it, it was an easy walk to the door.

'Good morning, Illya dear,' someone said as he walked in through the door, and he lifted his head and smiled. He had to remember to stop dropping his head while he walked as if he were trying to see the ground ahead. He couldn't see it and it made his neck ache.

'Good morning,' he said. 'Sandy?'

'The very same.'

Her arm looped into his. Sandy was a woman in her fifties who had macular degeneration and was slowly losing her sight from the centre of her field of vision outwards. She seemed to have adopted him. He didn't mind, because he liked her.

'Are you looking forward to braille?' she asked him, and he smiled rather nervously.

'I don't know if looking forward is the phrase, exactly,' he said, because he had been struggling with it all week. 'But I've been practising with the cards at home. I hope I'll do better today. Were you waiting for me?'

'Well, I always like to walk into class on the arm of a handsome young man,' Sandy replied, and Illya laughed lightly.

It had felt odd to him that Sandy was here at the rehabilitation school learning braille, when the first thing she had commented on when he walked into class on Monday was that he was such a _handsome young man_. His idea of blindness had been like so many other people's; if he thought about it at all, he thought about a person who saw nothing but darkness. But Sandy had peripheral vision. Other people here had tunnel vision. Some could see things that were very close, some could see colours, some, like him, just light. He was learning that there were as many forms of blindness as there were people.

'Who's taking whom down to class?' he asked as they started along the corridor to the braille room. 'You know, I've had this cane for less than a week and it's incredible. Why don't you consider it? It must be difficult without central vision.'

Sandy squeezed his arm and laughed. 'And look like a blind old woman?'

'Better that than black and blue,' Illya countered. 'Is this the room?' he asked, tapping the cane against a doorframe as she turned.

He hadn't been paying attention, relying on Sandy to guide him, although he knew he should have been looking out at least as much as she was. He found his seat at the desk and replied to the teacher's greeting with, 'Good morning, Mary.'

The scents and sounds of the classroom made him think of childhood schooling and being a university student. Dust, hot radiators, a slight scent of damp. Wooden surfaces and hard echoes. Sunlight came in through the window to his left and sank into his cheek, intensified by the glass. He laid his cane down on the floor, trying to make sure it was out of the way. He touched his hands to the desk surface, feeling an open book laid there, and a block of wood with six pegs in it which was there to help him understand the configuration of each braille cell in a rather larger format than the small bumps impressed in the book.

'Sandra, are you happy carrying on with your book for now?' the teacher asked, coming across the room to Illya's desk. 'Illya, I want to spend some time with you going over the letters you're confusing. I know it's frustrating you, but there's no time limit on this and I think we just need to use more patience and go over them on the model as well as the book. Okay?'

'Okay,' Illya nodded as the woman seated herself next to him and laid her hands over his. She was right. It was frustrating him and he couldn't see how he would ever be able to read with the fluency of his teacher, who was younger than he was. This reminded him not so much of his more recent studies at Cambridge, but of being a little boy sitting on a chair with his feet not reaching the floor, trying to understand how letters went together to make the sounds that formed the words. It all felt so infantile and so hard. He thought then about Cyrillic, and asked, 'I suppose reading this braille won't help me with Russian.'

Mary laughed and said, 'I'm afraid not. It's a whole different character set. Different languages have different brailles, but once your touch has developed it's just a case of memorising the codes and contractions. Do you read many languages, Illya?'

He smiled. 'I did,' he said rather darkly. 'Russian and Ukrainian are my native tongues. There's French and Spanish, and I'm passable in Italian. A little Greek.' He stopped and shrugged. He didn't want to sound as if he were bragging, and he didn't want to talk about his job. 'I used to travel a lot, and I've studied in France and England. I learnt my languages from necessity.'

Her hands were still over his on the table, as if she had forgotten she was moving them to the braille book.

'Did you study languages?' she asked.

'No. I have a doctorate in quantum mechanics,' he said quietly. He gave a small, rather bitter laugh. 'I suppose that's all behind me now too...'

Her hands firmed over his. 'Illya, there are many forms of braille and there's no reason you shouldn't achieve fluency in them. Now, I just teach reading and writing of literary braille, but there's Nemeth braille for mathematics, there's musical braille – '

'Musical?' Illya looked up, startled. 'You mean a person can read music even if they're blind?'

'People can read almost anything as long as there's a script for it, Illya. You play an instrument too?'

'Well, yes, a few,' he murmured.

'I didn't realise I was in the presence of a savant. Illya, Nemeth braille and musical braille are both beyond me. I never could stand math and I never learnt an instrument. But once you've mastered regular braille I'd encourage you to learn the other forms. We have a music teacher here. I know musical braille is very complex, but if you crack it you can take out scores from the library and learn new pieces.'

'Perhaps I should crack my ABCs first,' Illya said with a small smile. That felt enough of a challenge for now. He came into these lessons with optimism but very soon he felt like throwing the books across the room. He felt like that now, and he hadn't even started.

'You will,' Mary assured him. 'I promise you, Illya.'

He shook his head and groaned and said almost involuntarily, 'I feel so useless at it.'

He was used to being a quick learner. He wasn't used to finding things so hard.

'Illya,' she said firmly then. 'Illya, I lost my sight when I was seventeen. I thought that was the end of everything. I didn't just lose a bit or lose it gradually. I went to sleep with a headache and the next thing I knew – didn't know, I suppose – was I was in a coma in hospital. When I woke up I couldn't see anything. Not light, not colour. Nothing at all. I'm not going to pretend I was a saint and just sat up in bed and carried on. I was just as lost as you. But I got back on my feet, Illya. I got to university – a few years late, sure, but I got my degree. I held a few different jobs and now I have this one. I live alone, and let me tell you, living alone is a whole lot easier than living with a bunch of sighted people. I cook, I clean, I go out and socialise. If I go out in mismatched socks or looking like a scarecrow then my friends are lying to me about it. I get to work on my own and I get home on my own. I need a little more help sometimes than most people, but I live my life very nicely, thank you. You will too. It might take you some time to get to the point where you feel that's a possibility, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.'

Sometimes Illya felt he had heard enough inspirational tales, but he nodded and sighed and said, 'I suppose we should get to the book.'

'All right,' Mary agreed. 'The book. I want you to go over the first page again and see if you can pick up the letters correctly, then we'll spend some time going over the ones you're having trouble with on the block, then we'll go back to the book. Okay?'

'Отлично,' he muttered sarcastically, almost under his breath, and Mary said lightly, 'Maybe you could teach me Russian while I teach you to read braille. Are we starting with curse words?'

He flushed red, felt self-conscious, then remembered that she wouldn't be able to see his embarrassment. Even when he was at the limit of his patience he didn't swear in front of women.

'I'm starting with A,' he said, finding the first page and touching his fingers to the little bumps there. 'By coffee time I should be on B.'

((O))

'So, how's the student doing?'

Illya turned when he heard Napoleon's voice in the café doorway. The door clattered closed and he smiled as Napoleon came over towards him. He was tired and felt more discouraged than he wanted to feel, but it was so good to hear his partner's voice at the end of a long day.

'As well as can be expected,' he said as Napoleon's hand touched his shoulder. He turned back to Sandy and said, 'Sandy, this is my friend, Napoleon.'

'Oh yes, your housemate,' Sandy said warmly, getting to her feet. 'Illya, tell me how the ladies in your building cope with two such handsome men living in one place?'

If he blushed now, Napoleon would see, and there was a high chance Sandy would too. He didn't know what to say, so he lifted his coffee cup to check it was empty, then got up too.

'Napoleon, I'd like you to meet Sandy,' he said, turning to Napoleon, and wasn't at all surprised when Napoleon replied in his most suave tones, 'Enchanted, Sandy. Do you mind if I whisk Illya away from you before I get a ticket on my car?'

'Yes, and we need to go before the stores close,' Illya added. 'I need to buy a watch. Sandy, I'll see you tomorrow.'

'Bring your friend,' Sandy told him in a laughing voice. 'School gets a whole lot more appetising with so many good looking fellers around.'

'Unfortunately Napoleon will have to get to work,' Illya replied, finding his cane and taking Napoleon's arm. 'All right, I'm ready. We had better go.'

'One of your teachers?' Napoleon asked as they left the café, and Illya shook his head.

'Student. She's taking braille with me, although she's a lot more advanced. She's been learning for a while.'

'Student?' Napoleon repeated in surprise, pausing ever so briefly in his step. 'But she can see, can't she? Ah, look, the car's here. There you go. I'm opening the door.'

'Yes, Sandy is a student,' Illya nodded once he was in the car and Napoleon was getting in to the driver's seat. 'Yes, she has some sight. She doesn't have central vision so she's finding reading very difficult, and her vision is only going to get worse.'

'Oh,' Napoleon said, as if he were mulling that over. 'Oh, okay.'

'We had better get to this store,' Illya said then.

He didn't feel like mixing his day at school with his time with Napoleon. He didn't feel like trying to explain how varied blindness could be and all the different types of failing sight he had discovered in this week. It had felt so hard today, like fighting through treacle, and he just wanted to get everything finished and go home.

'Where was it again?' Napoleon asked, and Illya recited tiredly, '111 East 59th Street.'

'Illya, are you all right?' Napoleon asked.

He leant back into his seat and smiled tiredly. 'Yes, I'm all right,' he said. 'It was just a long day, and I'm tired, and I want to get to this shop and buy what I need and go home.'

He needed a watch and an alarm clock that he could read. He was tired of asking other people for the time and never knowing if he were punctual. But oh, he wanted to just go home and lie down and close his eyes. His head ached, his fingers felt odd from so long feeling over braille letters and working on learning how to explore place settings at tables. His wrist ached from cane practice. He had spent a long time that afternoon walking through the streets around the school, and he had found it difficult and unnerving, especially along one of the busier roads where the cars seemed to travel so fast and so close to the kerb. It was hard to imagine managing it without someone with him, managing crossing streets and finding his way without help, and he felt heavy with the thought that he might never manage it. He didn't want to go into a shop full of things for blind people, to _be_ a blind person being guided through life. He just wanted to go home and open his eyes and see.

'Hey,' Napoleon said, putting a hand on his thigh. He was quiet as he started the engine and pulled away from the kerb, but then he said, 'I'm sorry, Illya. I want to say it'll be all right, it will get better. And it will. But I know you don't always want to hear that.'

Illya smiled ruefully. Just having Napoleon here to listen made him feel a little better.

'I'm sorry too,' he said. 'I'm sorry you're having to share your life with the eternal grouch. I'm all right. There's just a lot to learn, and it's not as easy as I would like.'

'This is the man who aced Survival School so comprehensively he was called back to teach a class on explosives,' Napoleon reminded him. 'How did you feel in your first week there?'

He thought back to his time on that island. It was so soon after he had finished his PhD. He had been recruited in London in the final stages of completing his thesis and had been booked for the survival course as soon as he was released from Cambridge. That place had been so different from Ukraine, so different from Paris, so different from Cambridge. He had never been to such a humid, exotic hell hole as that. He had spent most of his life in cities, and this was an island isolated by unending sea, full of people who looked on him with suspicion as U.N.C.L.E.'s first Soviet recruit. It was the first time he had been exposed to the almost pathological distrust that Americans had for Russians. It had been strange and unnerving to see so much hatred in people's eyes. Not everyone's. There was a fair share of people who were just – people. Just open and welcoming, intelligent and interesting, as were most U.N.C.L.E. recruits. But there were also, as his Cambridge friends would have put it, arseholes.

'Yes, that first week was hard,' he murmured.

Harder than this in a way, but only for a brief period of time. He remembered when suspicion had turned into open aggression, and his first hand to hand combat class training had been put to use in the mess that evening. He remembered leaving one of his classmates with a broken nose, and retreating to his bunk bruised and not a little shaken, and wondering why in hell he had abandoned gentle academics for this hell. He remembered closing his eyes and forcing himself to relax and forcing himself to sleep, trusting that the broken nose he'd dealt out was enough of a message for the others to leave him alone. But when he had woken in the morning he had been able to see. He had woken early and gone down to the beach and sat on the sand and watched the sun rise as liquid fire out of the ocean. Lessons had been hard and the suspicion and bullying had taking a while to die away, but he had been able to see.


	13. Chapter 13

'God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our saviour was born on Christmas day...'

The warm, rich singing faded in and out as Illya moved his head under the shower, as the water hissed over his ears and then struck his shoulders and then the wall again. There was warmth everywhere. It was freezing outside and the light held the blue tinge of a world covered in snow, but the heating was warm and the fire was lit and the shower water was deliciously warm. Illya finished off sudding soap over his body, let the water rinse his skin, then turned the knob to off and stepped out of the shower onto the mat, grabbing a towel from the heated rail. Napoleon's apartment was ridiculously decadent, but he couldn't say he didn't like having a warm towel to scrub over his wet skin.

He could hear Napoleon more clearly now that the shower was off, his voice coming through from the other room, full of gentle joy. He had evidently got up early, because Illya had woken to an empty bed, but he had lain there for a while, just listening to the sounds of Napoleon bumbling around the apartment, before dragging himself out of the warm bed for his shower.

He scoured every inch of skin with the towel before rubbing it through his hair, leaving it a tousled mess. Then he put the towel back carefully over the rail to dry, and went through into the sitting room, where Napoleon's voice was suddenly clear as bells, the fire was crackling with a soft scent of wood smoke, and there was such a faint, delicate scent of pine in the air. They had bought the Christmas tree together, brought it home, put it up, and Napoleon had insisted that Illya help decorate it. He had been so happy that Illya had been able to see something of the colour of the lights if he brought them right up to his face. Privately, Illya's own feelings had been confused over those colours. It was good to see, but it was like reaching into the mist for something he couldn't have any more. It was like a voice from the grave.

'Well, merry Christmas, my little Russian cherub,' Napoleon said as soon as he saw him.

Illya grimaced. 'Napoleon, there was a reason why my people did away with religion. Do I honestly look like a cherub to you? Fat cheeks and curly hair?'

'You're talking about greetings cards and statuettes, my dear. Real cherubim moved like flashes of lightning. I've never seen a human being more like lightning than you.'

'They also had four faces and the hooves of a calf,' Illya pointed out. 'But merry Christmas, Napoleon.'

'Well, merry Christmas.'

Napoleon was very close now, and as he slipped an arm around Illya's waist Illya was gratified to discover that he was entirely naked too. His dry skin pressed against Illya's damp, his lips touched Illya's, and they kissed.

'I'm glad you're up,' Napoleon said. 'That means we can go back to bed.'

'I think you've got it backwards. I'm hungry,' Illya objected.

Napoleon laughed aloud and kissed him on the forehead, and then on the chest, and then knelt to kiss him on the flatness of his abdomen.

'Trust me,' he said, standing up again. He slipped his arm to the small of Illya's back again, took Illya's hand with his free hand, and began to waltz. 'God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,' he sang, and Illya laughed, coming closer and dropping his head onto Napoleon's shoulder so he could follow the movement of his whole body.

'Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray. Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. Oh tidings of comfort and joy...'

'Hypocrite,' Illya murmured, because the length of his body was pressed against Napoleon's, muscle against muscle, cock against cock. Things were definitely stirring down there, and he knew it was nothing most of the good Christians of America would approve of.

'Heathen,' Napoleon countered, continuing to waltz even though he was no longer singing.

It was such a deep, intimate feeling, slowly swaying against the whole of Napoleon's naked body, moving to his movement, head on his shoulder, eyes closed. He could feel the small movements of the muscles in Napoleon's back under the palm of his hand. He could feel the heat of Napoleon all down his chest, their hearts beating against one another. He could have stayed like this forever. But Napoleon pushed Illya backwards and he realised he had been danced all the way into the bedroom and was being gently lowered down onto the bed.

'Atheist. There's a difference. And I'm quite happy with my atheism,' Illya grinned as he spread himself back on the bedclothes. 'Are you as happy with your lax Christianity?'

'I'm happy with you,' Napoleon said, and he began to drop kisses on Illya's chest, on his arms, on his thighs.

Illya growled and grabbed Napoleon by the shoulders and turned him roughly onto the bed. He had no intention of lying here and being passive. He straddled Napoleon's hips and lowered his head to catch his lips, to taste the depths of his mouth, to bite lightly at his lip, his neck, his nipple.

'Ouch,' Napoleon protested, and Illya laughed.

'You have endured torture by Thrush. What I just did wasn't painful.'

'No,' Napoleon agreed. 'No, it was perfect.'

Illya took that as an invitation. He explored the rest of Napoleon's soft, muscled torso with tongue and teeth, until he had slid low enough that he caught the head of his cock into his mouth. He tasted the salty slick of pre-come, ever so gently teased his tongue around the contours of the head until Napoleon was gasping and whimpering and so hard that Illya could feel the pulse of his blood where his hand was curled around the shaft.

He paused, taking his mouth away, stroking his hands down the firm, broad solidity of Napoleon's thighs, just feeling the warmth and the strength of him, and he was so overcome with love that for a moment he forgot what he was doing. He just knelt there, feeling Napoleon, touching him, aching with the need to be part of him. Then Napoleon said, 'Uh, Illya. You still with me? I've – er – I've got a need here, you know.'

'I love you,' Illya said, and he ached to see Napoleon's face. But Napoleon reached out a hand instead and stroked his cheek so tenderly and said, 'I love you too. I never expected to find anything like this. But – '

Illya came down over him again, exploring every inch of him, then nudging his thighs aside and coming down close to him and pressing their cocks together, heat against heat, just holding them together for a moment and feeling their heartbeats blending. He touched the cool, soft skin of Napoleon's balls and inhaled the clean scent of him, and then he kissed him and said, 'Hold that thought.'

He put his hand into the night stand drawer and felt for the little bottle there, bringing it to his nose to check the scent to be sure he had the right thing. Then he knelt between Napoleon's legs, squeezed out a little of the lubricant, slicked it down the length of his aching cock, and smiled at Napoleon's little whimper at the sight.

'Jesus Christ, Illya, do you have any idea...' he said.

He didn't hold himself back then. He stroked a hand down Napoleon's thigh, felt that he had dropped his legs apart and was waiting for him. He stroked more of the melting fluid between Napoleon's legs, sinking it into his body before coming over him, feeling him again, putting his cock to that strong, tight muscle and entering the heat and strength of Napoleon's body. God, it felt so good. It felt so amazing to be inside Napoleon. Every time he was amazed at how good it felt. He leant forward so that he was pressing Napoleon's firm, hot cock between their bodies, kissed his face and his shoulders, touched all he could of him as he kept moving in that steady, slow rhythm, taking delight in the muscular compression of his flesh.

It was like an explosion in his soul. He was hardly aware of anything but the feeling around him, of Napoleon's heat and his little noises chiming with his own guttural sounds of effort. When he came it was like an explosion in his soul, and everything disappeared except for that billowing feeling of pleasure and gratification. Then he was aware again of Napoleon underneath him, of the stickiness between them because Napoleon had come too, of the ragged heaving of his own chest and Napoleon's, of sweat and skin and touch. He moved his head just enough to kiss Napoleon on the line of his jaw, moved his hand enough to cup the side of his head, feeling sweat in his hair. The warm air in the bedroom was soft around them.

'Suppose we should have waited to shower,' he murmured after a while.

'Washcloth'll do it,' Napoleon responded sleepily, and Illya poked him.

'Hey. You can't go back to sleep. You promised to feed me.'

Napoleon laughed lazily. 'I thought I just had. No,' he said, as Illya poked him again. 'All right, all right. Tyrant. Come on. Let's get cleaned up, and then I will feed you a feast such as would befit a king. Happy?'

'Deliriously,' Illya smiled.

((O))

'I don't think I've ever had champagne in bed before ten in the morning,' Illya said.

The champagne flute was held delicately in his left hand, the bubbles rising lazily in the golden liquid. It struck Napoleon that the colour of the champagne was very like the colour of Illya's hair. He missed the colour of Illya's eyes. Illya would laugh at his sentimentality if he said his eyes and hair had reminded him of summer sky and wheat fields, but they had.

He leant over to kiss Illya's golden hair and took another sip of champagne. It was glorious to sit in bed with his beautiful Russian partner on Christmas morning, sharing champagne and a selection of pastries warmed in the oven. It was glorious to watch Illya licking flakes of pastry from his fingers, jam from the corner of his mouth, and sipping at the pale champagne. They had spent Christmases together before, sometimes by necessity rather than choice, sometimes in the worst of circumstances. They had never spent a Christmas like this before.

Illya took another sip of his drink and then felt carefully for the night stand before putting the glass down. It still seemed so strange at times to Napoleon to see him using his fingers in place of his eyes. He couldn't shake the feeling of something wrong, something disjointed that ought to be fixed. But he was growing more and more used to Illya's blindness, to where he needed help and where he didn't, to what he could and couldn't do. Those things changed, sometimes overnight, as he learnt to manage without sight, and it was like watching a flower bloom to see him growing in confidence and ability every day.

He watched Illya's face closely as he picked up a pastry from the shared plate between their knees and bit into it. He saw the minute upturn of the corners of his mouth. He must like the taste. Illya's moods were such a subtle palate, and this morning he seemed light and happy.

'Let's go out,' Napoleon said on impulse.

Illya put the pastry he was eating back on the plate and dusted off his fingers.

'Out? You told me there was a foot of snow out there!'

'At least a foot, unbroken,' Napoleon said with a grin. 'It's pristine. Look, the turkey's already in the oven, and it has to sit there a while before I can do anything else – '

'Before _we_ can do anything else,' Illya corrected him. 'I'm helping, remember? I'm the only one here who's had cookery lessons.'

'Okay, before we can do anything else,' Napoleon conceded. 'So let's go out in the snow.'

Illya grumbled, and Napoleon wheedled, 'Just for half an hour. Ten minutes. Come on.'

So Illya growled and picked up his half eaten pastry and pushed the rest of it into his mouth. Then he said, 'Well, I'll let you pick out the clothes, Napoleon. I won't take my cane. I don't think it'll be much use in snow like that.'

'I'll look after you,' Napoleon promised.

He just wanted to see Illya in the snow. The last time he had seen that, the last time before Illya had lost his sight, he had looked perfect. They had walked through the snow-covered streets of early morning Stockholm, the streetlights catching every angle of Illya's face, their footsteps crunching on the ground. He remembered the flush in Illya's cheeks, the blue hat pulled down over his hair, mirroring the blue of his eyes. How red his lips had looked. He hadn't looked on him sexually then, not consciously at least, but he had looked beautiful.

He found clothes, then scarves and gloves and hats, and got dressed and corralled Illya out into the drifting snow. Illya turned his face to the sky on the top of the stoop and let the falling flakes scatter down over his skin.

'It's snowing,' he said, sticking out his tongue and catching a flake.

'Coming down well. Take care,' Napoleon told him as he began down the stoop. 'There might be ice under the snow.'

Illya just carried on down the steps until his feet sank into the deep accumulated snow at the bottom. No one had broken a path. He pulled off a glove and crouched and lightly swept his fingers through the top layer of snow, looking almost quizzical, just as Napoleon had seen him a hundred times in the U.N.C.L.E. labs or investigating something in the field.

'Is it snow, professor?' he asked with a laugh.

Illya's movement was so swift it took him utterly by surprise. The hurriedly snatched up snowball hit Napoleon full in the face, and he sputtered, flicking snow from his eyes.

Still squatting, head turned up, grinning like an imp, Illya asked, 'How's my aim?'

'Disturbingly perfect,' Napoleon said, gathering his own handful of snow. He hurled it back at his partner and it exploded across Illya's face.

Illya stood up, spitting out snow, brushing it away with his gloved hand. He took off his dark glasses and shook snow out from behind the lenses. His cheeks were red and he was grinning, and Napoleon was overtaken with such a strong urge to kiss him that it was almost impossible to resist. How he wished he could just take him in his arms and kiss him in public like he would a woman. It was shameful that they had to hide this love. If only they were in the snow covered Alps, the Himalayas, the tundra of Canada; anywhere where there were no overlooking windows full of people to be disgusted by what they saw.

'Let's get inside. It's cold out here,' he said huskily.

'We've only just come out. I told you it would be cold,' Illya replied. 'You wanted to come out anyway.'

'I want to give you presents,' Napoleon said.

'The presents aren't going anywhere,' Illya shrugged. 'We're outside now. I want to be in the snow a little longer.'

Napoleon sighed. 'Well, we'll walk to the end of the block and back,' he said. 'How about that?'

He looped his arm through Illya's and walked with him, keeping him steady through the drifts, telling him about the thick white clouds and the fluttering snow and how red the façades of the buildings looked against all that white. Somewhere he could hear carol music, and further away was the sound of traffic. Perhaps some of the roads had been cleared. They got to the end of the block and turned around and started back, and Napoleon said spontaneously, 'I can't believe you threw a snowball at me!'

Illya laughed. 'I can't believe I hit you. I can't believe you had the audacity to throw one back at a helpless blind man.'

'You have never in your life been helpless,' Napoleon retorted.

Illya grew silent. They got back to the building and went inside, and in the privacy of the lift Napoleon reached out to brush a little snow from above Illya's ear, and then he leant in and gave him the long, passionate kiss he had wanted to in the street. Illya's lips were cold but the inside of his mouth was so warm.

'That's why I wanted to come inside,' Napoleon said. 'I wanted to kiss you so much out there.' He traced his fingers down Illya's cheek, seeing he was still quiet, and said softly, 'You might have needed some help, but you've never been helpless.'

Illya took his arm as the lift doors opened.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' he said.

((O))

This Christmas day was such a strange, almost surreal experience. Out in the snow, for just a moment Illya hadn't even thought about not being able to see. He had been possessed by pure joy. He had thrown a snowball, only a snowball, but being able to do something dynamic, and what's more, on target, had made him feel alive.

There were so many feelings crowding in. He had shared Christmas with Napoleon before, but sharing it with him as a couple felt like something loaded with importance. Standing in the kitchen with him chopping vegetables for their shared dinner, kneading soft, greasy stuffing together with his hands, peeling potatoes, felt so ridiculously domestic and so full of meaning. They were a married couple, just like a married couple, with one exception. How strange that his life had moved down this track.

And he couldn't see. That kept coming back to him, falling over him in waves. He couldn't see, he couldn't see. He forgot, not that he couldn't see but that it mattered, but then it draped down over him again, and it was like falling.

'Are you ready for gifts?' Napoleon asked, nudging against his shoulder on the sofa.

'Oh.'

He had been dwelling. If Napoleon asked him he wouldn't be able to deny that. But perhaps Napoleon just thought he was quiet or dozing, because he said nothing. The room was so warm and the fire cracked and spat not far away. Music drifted dreamily through the air and the scent of roasting meat was filling the apartment. It would be very easy to fall asleep.

'Yes,' Illya said, stirring himself from his comfortable position. 'Yes, let's exchange gifts.'

Napoleon took him by the hand. 'Come with me. Come over to the tree.'

The pine scent was even stronger by the tree, and as he brushed a hand over the branches bells tinkled softly. Napoleon had done all he could to make the tree be for Illya too. He remembered the New Year tree his parents had put up every year at home, remembered lying awake excitedly on New Year's Eve waiting for Ded Moroz, remembered the beauty of that tree in the corner of the room and the story his mother told him every year of the spiders that decorated it. He stood there touching a cool branch of pine and remembering, until Napoleon nudged him and said, 'Come on, sit down on the floor with me.'

It was strange opening presents without being able to see them, and strange listening to Napoleon tearing away the gift-wrapping from the records Illya had bought for him in Macy's. Strange to sit there while someone opened a present without being able to see the look of anticipation or gratification on his face. Illya opened flat, smooth squares that were obviously records. Some were thick boxes which Napoleon said were books read aloud. A few were jazz. He didn't ask how much money Napoleon had spent, but he loved him for thinking of things that he could enjoy.

The afternoon melted into music, closeness, and more food than seemed humanly possible. Napoleon had promised to make Christmas a time full of scents and sounds and tastes, and he did. Illya felt as if he would be floating if it weren't for the weight of the food in his stomach. Darkness fell outside and Napoleon lit the room with candles and the flickering fire, so the light was warm in Illya's eyes. They drank liqueurs and shared chocolates and turned the television on and listened to a documentary while they lay entwined on the sofa.

Illya lay with his head turned against Napoleon's chest, just listening, eyes closed, feeling surrounded by warmth. The voice on the documentary drifted into his mind, and sometimes he listened and sometimes he didn't. Napoleon's hand was lying on his back, warm and broad and gentle against him. In his ear he could hear the steady beat of Napoleon's heart. There were so many times when he had pressed his ear to that chest, listened intently to that beat to check it was still there, still strong enough, still regular. Too many times when Napoleon had almost slipped away. It was a blessing to be here now, safe and warm and together, their heartbeats strong and nothing to threaten them. As soon as Christmas was over Napoleon would be back at work and he would be back at school, and whenever Napoleon was sent on a mission Illya would have to wait and hope that he came back whole and alive. This peaceful and quiet time was such a blessing.


	14. Chapter 14

It had been – how long? He had been counting it in days, then in weeks. Now he supposed he should count it in months. It was like the measurement of a baby's life in the world. _I have been blind for two days. Five days. Fourteen days. Three weeks._ Now it was ten weeks, he thought. Two and a half months. He knew he should be more sure, but he wasn't really counting any more. It had been long enough. He knew that much. It had been long enough.

'Hey, Illya.'

He grunted and turned over in bed, pulling the covers a little further up over his head.

'Illya, have you been out of bed at all today?'

The Christmas season had faded away. Napoleon had amazed and delighted Illya by celebrating New Year's Day too, cooking traditional Ukrainian food as best he could, and giving Illya more gifts. Men had brought a huge wooden box into the apartment and split it open, and Illya had been almost bursting with frustration to know what it was. He had heard odd resonant sounds that had made him suspect as they took the thing from the box. And then Napoleon had taken him by the hand and touched his fingers to the keys of an upright piano. He had sat down and played for an hour.

Now he was running out of pieces he could play from memory and was working hard on listening to records and trying to play new pieces from what he had heard. His instructors had talked to him about learning musical braille, but he wanted to focus on reading fluency before he moved on to that. The whole concept of scores that could describe scales and octaves and phrase markings in six celled symbols one after the other felt hopelessly complex. His instructors had told him there could be as little as one bar per page, and a piece would have to be learnt off by heart before he could play it. It was so far from the ease of sight reading.

The glitter and delight and oddness of that strange Christmas had worn off now, and January had been a long, bleak month. He had some amount of focus and purpose in his life with the classes at the rehabilitation school, but he didn't go there every day now, and recently he had found the days when he didn't go were just so hard to get through. At first it had been so amazing, so exciting, discovering all of these new things, these new ways of coping in a world without sight. But he felt – he hardly knew how he felt. It was almost an absence of feeling. He seemed to go through cycles and waves, and right now he was heading down a tunnel into the darkness.

'Illya.'

Napoleon shook his shoulder, and Illya mumbled, 'Leave m'lone, Napoleon.'

He was in his own bed. He spent more and more time now in Napoleon's bed, but when he felt like this he ended up retreating to his own little room, to his own narrow bed. Wasn't the saying _misery loves company_? But his misery was a solitary thing. He huddled it to himself and turned in like an armadillo hiding from predators.

'Illya, did you wash the dishes?' Napoleon asked. 'Did you clean the counters?'

He grunted. He had forgotten about all of that. He was supposed to do some of the housework while he was at home with nothing else to do. He had learnt about how to methodically clean surfaces and be sure he'd not missed any spots. He had learnt about how to wash the dishes. It made sense for him to practice his living skills, especially when Napoleon was out at work. But he hadn't even thought about it, about any of it. He hadn't been in the kitchen except to grab a slice of bread as a kind of breakfast, and because he couldn't see the dirty dishes or the counters that needed wiping, it was so easy to forget.

'Illya, I want you to get up,' Napoleon said.

He didn't even flinch in response. He was a jellyfish beached on sand. He didn't have it in him to twitch as much as a finger. His mouth was dry but he didn't have the energy to fetch water. He wasn't hungry. He could lie here until he died.

The bedsprings creaked and the mattress shifted as Napoleon sat down. Finally Illya moved, just enough to turn a little towards Napoleon's gravity. He turned his face towards where Napoleon was sitting and tried to remember exactly how he looked. He could remember little details. The mole on his cheek. The little cleft in his chin. The colour of his eyes. But the rest of his face swam fuzzily in his memory. His face didn't matter any more. It was the feeling of Napoleon's hands that he knew, the scent of his body, the timbre of his voice.

But shouldn't his face matter? Shouldn't he feel grief at losing Napoleon's face? He wasn't sure if what he was feeling was grief. Was grief characterised by emptiness? Sometimes when he realised the sight of something didn't matter any more it felt like falling, like stepping into empty air, and he grasped out for something to hold on to with the desperation of a man falling from a cliff. If he let himself fall into blindness he would lose himself. He would lose everything that he used to be.

Napoleon's hand touched his shoulder, and Illya made himself move enough to touch those strong fingers.

'Come on, _tovarisch_ ,' Napoleon said softly. 'Talk to me, huh?'

'Oh, I don't know, Napoleon,' he said after a long, dull silence. 'I don't know. I'm tired...'

'You can't be tired. You've been in bed all day,' Napoleon said rationally. 'Do you know what time it is?'

He had a tactile watch now, and a tactile alarm clock. Which was more bother? Opening the glass front on the watch or feeling for the alarm clock? Just that decision seemed too much, but Napoleon solved it by putting the alarm clock in his hands. He oriented it so the feet were at the bottom, touched his fingers lightly to the solid hands, felt for the bumps that indicated the placement of the numbers. It was almost seven o'clock. He supposed it must be dark outside. Napoleon had turned on the light when he came into the room.

'How do I get into your head, Illya?' Napoleon asked after Illya had been quiet for too long. 'How do I understand what it's like?'

That created a sudden spark. He dropped the alarm clock onto the bedclothes and said with undisguised bitterness, 'Throw acid into your eyes. That should do it.'

' _Illya_.'

He breathed out, hard, and tried to pull himself together.

'I'm sorry, Napoleon,' he said. 'I'm – just having a bad day. That's all. I get them.'

'Yes, I know you do,' Napoleon said softly, taking both of Illya's hands in his and rubbing his palms gently. 'So talk to me. Tell me about it.'

Illya sighed then, and shook his head.

'What is there to say? You know it all. I can't see. I'll never see. I'm – trapped in this world...'

'You've been doing so well,' Napoleon said.

He had been doing well. He knew that. He had learnt so much about walking with the cane, about sensing what was around him by using his ears and his touch and his sense of smell, and what his instructor called _facial vision_. That felt like nothing so much as magic, but he was beginning to understand how it was that he could tell when there was a large object in his path or off to the side, before he touched it with cane or body. It was all to do with echoes, even though he was barely aware that he could sense them.

He didn't know what was wrong with him. He could read, painstakingly, sentences in braille. He and Napoleon had applied braille labels to tins in the kitchen, put markers on the knobs on the stove, put labels on bottles in the shower, although they kept coming off. They were going through the process of applying titles to everything in their combined record collection. He had his tactile watch and his tactile alarm clock. He was learning to type conventional type and braille. He had a tape recorder for recording notes. He had his blanks to help him fill in cheques, and his writing guide so that if he needed to write a letter he could do so without straying from the lines. He should be happy. He should be proud of what he had accomplished.

He felt tired. He felt dead. He felt trapped and muffled and lost. He had been to three different doctors in search of the hope of corneal transplant that Dr Atkins had planted in his mind, and each one had told him his eyes were too damaged, it wouldn't be possible. So he started to let go of sight and let go of hope. The world was receding around him and only sprang into being when he was touched, or when there was a sound. He was forgetting people's faces. He was forgetting just how Napoleon's car looked and what the view from the balcony would be like at this time of year. Everything was slipping away.

'I don't know,' was all he could think of to say. 'I don't know, Napoleon. It's – it's just so hard.'

He heard Napoleon's sigh. That located his head for a moment. He could feel Napoleon's hands. He knew where his buttocks and thighs pressed down onto the mattress. It was all bits and pieces, unconnected. He felt as unconnected as Napoleon seemed. It was as if he didn't know who he was any more. For years he had defined himself as Illya Kuryakin, agent for the U.N.C.L.E.. He was a dynamic man, an important man in some ways, even if his work was hidden away from the eyes of the public most of the time. All of those things had fallen away. He couldn't carry a gun. He couldn't fight. He couldn't travel, investigate, spy. He couldn't do any of those things that made him who he was. He couldn't even fall back on his old passion of quantum mechanics, because the journals were inaccessible to him and beyond Napoleon's comprehension for reading aloud. He felt as if the carapace that made him who he was was splitting and fragmenting and dropping away into the unseen abyss.

'I don't know who I am any more,' he said, aware of the plaintive tone in his voice, aware that those words were so inadequate to describe how he felt.

'Come on,' Napoleon said. 'Come on, get up. Get out of bed at least. Have a shower. Shave. You've been trapped in a cycle, Illya. You're either going to school or sitting in the apartment or studying. No wonder you feel like you've lost touch. You know, a couple of the guys at HQ asked me if I wanted to come to a bar tonight and I said no, but I was wrong. We're going out, both of us. It's been too long since you did anything that wasn't wrapped up in your blindness.'

Illya sighed. He didn't want to go out. He didn't want to parade his handicap. He wanted to curl like an ammonite and be buried in mud until he became a fossil.

'Come on,' Napoleon urged him. 'Get up, get cleaned up.'

And Napoleon's hand was on his cheek, rasping on the stubble there. Illya leant his face against Napoleon's palm, and Napoleon's lips touched his. He accepted the kiss, but when those lips moved away Illya said, 'I don't want to go out with the guys from work, Napoleon. Really, I never did like – '

'They ask about you,' Napoleon said. 'Someone asks after you every day. Some of the girls ask every time they see me. You're very missed, Illya.'

He gave half a smile. He wasn't sure how to feel about that.

'Yes, I know,' he said. 'They can't miss me half as much as I miss it. All right, I'll come out with you.'

'Wonderful,' Napoleon said. 'That's wonderful. Why don't you go get cleaned up and I'll call and let the guys know?'

He didn't want to go. He felt so disconnected, so apart from the rest of the world. But he smiled and said, 'All right then, Napoleon. I'll go and shower. Why don't you find me something to wear?'

((O))

He wore a black poloneck and black corduroy trousers, and with his black glasses Napoleon expressed the opinion that he looked like a beat poet. Illya would have rather looked invisible. As he navigated the crowded bar, his fingers in the crook of Napoleon's elbow and holding the cane awkwardly across his body, he felt intensely self conscious. Then he heard a voice he thought he recognised calling, 'Hey, Solo, over here,' and Napoleon changed direction.

There was a flurry of greetings and hands touched Illya's arms, but then someone asked, 'Where do you want to put Illya?' and he bit down hard on a swell of annoyance and indignation.

'Uh – Illya, there's a chair right here,' Napoleon said, extending his arm, and Illya moved his hand down to find the back. He tried to work out the problem of how to take off his coat and keep hold of the cane, but not lose the chair. Then Napoleon said close to his ear, 'Let me hold the cane a moment. I'll put your coat on the back of the chair when you've sat down,' and he kept a light contact with Illya as he stripped off his coat and guided his hand back to the chair when he was ready to sit. He was stupid, he supposed, to be afraid of losing an unmoving chair while standing still behind it, but he felt so intensely self conscious, so on the spot, that his thoughts were all over the place.

He sat down, taking the cane back and propping it between his legs and against his shoulder and wondering briefly if he shouldn't try one of the folding variety. It seemed so much in the way.

The chatter that had been going on had died when he and Napoleon arrived, and he wished it would carry on, because every noise helped to define the space around him. He could feel the edge of the table in front of him, a slightly tacky hard surface. On the underneath he felt old, hardened gum stuck to the wood. But the rest of the table and the rest of the room were made up of assumption and imagination. Every noise of a chair scraping on the floor or a raised voice or the clink of a glass made a little blip on a radar screen in his mind, then faded again. He was used to sitting in a room and scanning it visually for threats, avenues of escape, cover in the event of a fire fight. He hated the uncertainty of his surroundings. Then Napoleon was sitting down saying, 'It's a long, rectangular table, Illya. We're on the long side. Wall's behind you and you're facing the bar.'

He smiled and murmured, 'Thanks.'

Another voice cut into the air. 'Hey, Napoleon. What are you drinking? What about Illya?'

This time Illya let the fire just slip through.

'Illya would like a beer,' he said. 'Napoleon, could you let John know that Illya would like a beer?'

'Oh, gee, Illya, I'm sorry,' the man said then. Illya had recognised him as John Thorne, one of the other agents. 'I think – Well, I think none of us know what to say, how to – '

Illya smiled thinly, rolling the smooth cylinder of the cane between his palms.

'I'm not a different person,' he said. 'I just can't see. I'd like a beer, please, and to be treated like a normal person.'

'Uh, okay. Okay,' John Thorne said awkwardly. 'Napoleon?'

'I'll have a beer too,' Napoleon said from beside Illya. His presence was such a warm comfort.

'Okay. I'll just go and – '

His footsteps moved away but there was still a pall of awkwardness about the table. Then Napoleon said, 'Illya, there's George Dennell on your left, Jerry Goldstein opposite you. Desmond Balewa across from me, Mark Slate on our right at the end, and John Thorne has just gone up to the bar. He was at the left end of the table. There's a bowl of chips in the centre of the table and the rest of the guys already have their drinks.'

Illya smiled his thanks but he wished he already had some alcohol inside him. This felt so strange, so wrong. Thorne came back with the drinks and Illya closed his hand around the cool, hard glass and raised it to his lips, but as soon as the babble of conversation began again he felt so awkward. He had never been entirely at ease in this kind of gathering, but now he just didn't know what to do. When did he break in to the conversation when he couldn't see the faces of the people who were speaking? He couldn't always instantly tell the voices apart. When he was spoken to directly it was with such awkwardness that Illya became twice as awkward in replying. It was stupidly hard to follow what was being said when the whole bar was alive with other chatter and with music that fed constantly through everything else, with the noises of footsteps and of glasses clinking and of chairs scraping on the floor. All of those noises seemed to be right upon him, all jumbled together in a great felt of sound. He couldn't split things apart.

'Illya. Hey, Illya.'

It was George Dennell to the left of him, he remembered, and he was touching Illya's arm. He put his glass down but kept his hand on it, and turned his head.

'Hello, George,' he said. He had got used to speaking to Napoleon without seeing him, and he had started to get used to speaking to strangers that way, but he had hardly interacted with other people that he knew.

'Illya. Look, Illya – Oh, gee, not _look_. I'm – '

George was as awkward as he was.

'George, you can say _look_ to me,' Illya told him quietly. 'It's a figure of speech. I understand.'

'Oh, well – ' George floundered again, and Illya waited. 'Look, Illya, I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Do you remember that time with the File 40 débâcle? Project Windfall. Gee, when I had to wear those contact lenses so the detraining wouldn't stick. You know, that was terrible, not being able to see for that half hour, so I know how you – I mean, I have some idea how...'

'George,' Illya said, but he wasn't sure how to continue. He didn't know how George comparing a half hour of voluntary blindness with a prospective lifetime of the same would help in any way. 'George, I appreciate what you're trying to say – '

How strange it was to be talking to George like this, hearing only his voice. He used to see him every other day about headquarters, always in those thick-framed glasses, tall and gangly, in his slightly over-large suits. And now he was just a voice. He tried to bring George's face into his mind but it came in pieces like a Picasso painting and swam away.

'Well, Illya, I'm most awfully sorry for you, anyway,' George continued. 'I can't imagine – It must be so hard for you.'

Illya lifted his drink and took a mouthful, giving himself time to think of a reply. He hated to think of people pitying him.

'Yes,' he said eventually. 'Yes, it's been hard, but – ' He tried to think of a platitude, and failed. He wished he had ignored Napoleon's entreaties and stayed in bed. He took another mouthful of the beer. He would have liked to reach out to the bowl of crisps Napoleon had mentioned but he wasn't going to start feeling for it.

'Well, you know, Illya, if you ever need anything,' George said. 'Anything at all – '

Illya smiled drily, thinking, _I need my sight_. Someone from across the table must have heard George's words, because he chimed in, saying, 'Yeah, Illya, if you ever need a ride or someone to take you to the store, or – '

'Thank you,' Illya said, before the man could go further. Who was it? Was it Jerry? It was hard to tell with the music so loud. The idea of being taken to the store like that was awful. 'Thank you,' he said again, 'but I shouldn't need help. The cabs are very convenient, and I can get myself to the local store on foot.'

Napoleon's knee knocked against his, and Illya returned a little pressure with his own. He sat drinking his drink and stopped trying to talk with the group. They were talking, in that coded way that U.N.C.L.E. employees grew used to using, about missions, about the latest technological developments in the organisation, about future plans. He had nothing to add to that. He wasn't part of it any more.

And then Napoleon said, 'Well, gee, would you look at the time? I'm sorry guys, but Illya and I have a reservation at a restaurant in a quarter hour. Yeah, I know, but I said we might not be able to stay long...'

Illya could have put his arms around him. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take, but with Napoleon's words he echoed his own apologies and got to his feet and shrugged into his coat and waited for Napoleon to offer his arm. He exchanged goodbyes with the others and smiled and expressed regret, but he was so glad to be leaving.

He followed Napoleon through the crowd, and this time he touched the cane to the floor, to try to get a better idea of the room. He felt the floorboards through the cane tip as they walked out of the place, each little click of the tip over each tiny unevenness between boards. He felt the boards give way to smooth stone, maybe a foot-worn sill in the doorway, which dropped down to the concrete pavement. He breathed in the crisp air and exhaled his relief.

'Thank you, Napoleon. You didn't really make reservations?'

Napoleon laughed. 'No, I didn't really make reservations; but it was obvious you'd had enough.'

'Yes,' Illya murmured and shook himself. 'Yes, I'd had quite enough.'

'Give them time,' Napoleon told him softly. 'They don't know what to do or what to say.'

'I haven't sprouted an extra arm,' Illya said, wondering how much time they needed, if there would ever be enough time for people to start treating him normally again. 'I'm not dying.'

'No,' Napoleon said. 'Come on. It's cold. Let's walk. No, I know you haven't sprouted an extra arm, but they just don't know what to say.'

Illya grunted. He knew it was true. He knew if the tables were turned he wouldn't know what to say either. He longed for his previous life, his previous self. He was so very aware of the responses of the cane as he tapped it across the ground. He was so aware of the noises and echoes that made up the space around him. He was so changed.

'Hey, it's snowing,' Napoleon said, just as Illya felt the first flakes on his face.

'Oh,' Illya said.

It had snowed and thawed a few times in the last months and whenever the place was covered in snow it was like going into an alien world. He was just starting to build up a detailed understanding of how the street outside the apartment felt through the cane – the slight differences in the bases of the lampposts, the places where there was a crack or dip in the concrete, or the kerb was lower, where the stoops came out across the pavement and how those steps felt, if any of them had broken edges, if they had iron railings or none at all. He was starting to be able to tell exactly where he was, as long as he concentrated, just gaining enough confidence to walk around the block alone. Snow would ruin all of that.

'Well, I hope it doesn't settle,' he said.

'Well, it will be what it will be,' Napoleon said philosophically. 'Listen, Illya, what do you say we go somewhere else? No big groups. Just you and me. I don't feel like going home.'

Illya was tired. It was so ridiculously tiring fighting through his blindness to try to even approach living a normal life. But Napoleon was the kind of man who loved to go out, and Illya knew that all that had ceased the moment that man had thrown acid in his eyes. So he nodded and said, 'All right, Napoleon. Let's go somewhere else,' and Napoleon stopped on the pavement to hail a cab.


	15. Chapter 15

The little jazz club was one that Illya knew so well it was almost like going home. He had always liked to visit it on those nights when he was in town and not exhausted from a mission or injured or needing to be fresh for the next day. He had spent so many hours in this place, drinking, eating, listening to the music. Sometimes he talked, sometimes he slipped onto the piano stool or brought his English horn and joined in with the music. It was that kind of place, the kind of place where if you were good enough you shared your talent, and if not you sat getting increasingly drunk or stoned and just listened. There was a little flurry of questions and awkward sentiments from people who recognised him when he first walked through the door, but then he was left alone with Napoleon, and it felt so good to be back here.

The air was thick with cigarette smoke and music snaked and entwined through voices, laughter, chairs scraping, forks clattering on china, glasses clinking or making a solid, flat knock as they were set back on wood tables only thinly muffled with cloth. It was the sound that populated the place and made it alive. A silent room was an empty room. He could visualise this room because he knew it, but it was the sound that was important.

Most important was the music. He could sink himself into the music. He could unpick it as if he were reading a novel in his first language, understand and appreciate each strand. He wondered if Napoleon knew just how intimate and important his connection to music was. He thought not. Napoleon liked music, but he wasn't a musician. He was sure that when Napoleon listened to music he wasn't seeing the staves in his mind. He would have to learn musical braille when he got the chance. He really would...

He was tired and he didn't feel like talking, but the music was a safety net and he was quite content to just sit there and listen. A girl had come over and insinuated herself into the spare seat at the table, and Napoleon was flirting outrageously, but Illya didn't mind. Flirting was a way of life for Napoleon, and Illya knew who he'd be going home with. He remembered all those times in the past when Napoleon had flirted and Illya had felt that strange, inexplicable itch, an annoyance apparently without reason. He had poured ice water on Napoleon's flirting so many times. Perhaps in some way he had known that Napoleon was his. He had always hated to share Napoleon. Being with Napoleon was like being under a warm, slightly dazzling light. But right now he was content for this girl to entertain Napoleon while Illya just listened to the music. He was content because he knew there wasn't a chance of losing Napoleon to her.

'Yes, he's really Russian,' he heard Napoleon say in a lazy, indulgent tone, and his attention flicked back to his partner and the girl.

'Yes, I'm really Russian,' Illya smiled. It all felt a bit easier now. It was easier to talk to a stranger, somehow, than someone who had known him before he lost his sight. There were no expectations to let down. She would have preconceptions about his blindness but they wouldn't be mixed up with a past memory of him as a sighted person.

'Well, wow, that's amazing,' the girl gushed. 'Can you speak Russian to me?'

Illya tilted his head on one side and thought, and said, 'Что бы вы хотели, чтобы я сказал по-русски?' He shrugged. 'В магазине на углу можно купить виноград и корм для собак.'

He heard her sigh at his words, and grinned. He had been talking about buying groceries. It was amazing what a few words in another language could do to a woman, no matter what was said.

'Wow,' she said. 'Just – wow...'

'Yeah, it gets me like that too,' Napoleon said, and Illya grinned. Napoleon had never swooned over his Russian before but it warmed Illya to think that perhaps he had always been swooning in secret.

'So – uh, Illya – what do you do?' the girl asked him. 'Are you a businessman like Napoleon?'

Illya smiled, wondering what to say. 'Well, at the moment – ' he began, thinking, _At the moment I do nothing. Nothing at all._

'Illya is a physicist with a PhD. He's also a gymnast, and a musician, and a polyglot,' Napoleon said in such a tone of love that Illya glowed. He was all of those things, wasn't he? But he thought of all the other things he used to be. A sharpshooter. A brilliant pursuit driver. A pilot. A spy...

'I – er – at the moment I just attend school,' he said, because that was the truth, wasn't it? His life was on hold while he learnt braille and cane travel and typing and domestic science.

'Oh, what do you study?' the girl asked in a fascinated tone. 'Seems like you know most everything already!'

He fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth under the table, and said, 'I study how to be blind.'

'Oh,' she said in a rather subdued tone. But then she said more brightly, 'I bet you're the best student they have. You must be so clever...'

That made him smile. He thought of the other people he had met at the school, more women than men, old and young, most with more sight than him and a few with less. It was such a relief to just be able to talk with people who shared his experience and had different insights and reactions, and to not _always_ talk about that experience. It was so good going to that café across the road in a little group and sitting there drinking coffee and just talking about the news and current events and what he might do tomorrow. It made him feel part of the world again.

'I do all right,' he said.

'Of course he's the best student they have,' Napoleon said, putting a hand over his. 'It's in Illya's nature to excel.'

 _Even at blindness,_ Illya thought with a bitter little twist inside. _The best damn blind man in the class..._

'I'm not so good at cookery,' he said. It was true that his teachers said he was doing well with braille and showed a proficiency with the cane, but so far in home economics he had managed to thoroughly burn toast and the cake he had tried to bake had turned out as a lumpy brick.

'Well, it's lucky I can cook for you,' Napoleon said, and his knee rubbed against Illya's under the table. 'But listen, Isabel – was it Isabel? Yes. I think your girlfriends over there are getting impatient to leave, so – '

'Oh,' she said, and this time Illya hid his smile with a hand over his mouth and a small cough. He had never known Napoleon to deliberately blow off a girl like this.

'Oh, yes, you're right,' the girl said. 'Well, it was lovely to meet you – both of you. Good luck at school, Illya.'

There was a scraping of a chair as the girl stood up. He and Napoleon stood too, briefly, then regained their seats, and Illya asked in an undertone, 'Napoleon, since when did you put off beautiful women to spend time with me?'

Napoleon laughed quietly. 'For a start, _tovarisch_ , how do you know she was beautiful?'

Illya snorted. 'Of course she was. I could tell by your voice. But go on. Since when?'

Napoleon touched a hand to Illya's knee under the table. 'You know the answer to that well enough. Now, are we going to get something to eat or are you just going to sit there with your head in the clouds listening to the music all evening?'

'To eat?'

Illya hadn't even thought about food, but now he did he suddenly felt hungry. He had been so very self conscious about eating in the early days, but he had spent time at the school learning to locate and identify his food with the ends of his knife and fork, to judge the size of portion he was picking up, how to cut his food and keep it near the centre of the plate and guard against spills. He felt confident that with the right choice of food he would be able to be presentable here.

'Yes, little flower. To eat,' Napoleon said. 'I'm starving. The food they keep bringing out looks amazing. So what would you like?'

He remembered how good the food here was, and there were wholesome scents in the air. It had been so long since he had been out like this with Napoleon, just sitting in a club listening to music and drinking and eating good food. He had felt as if it were impossible to do things like that now, and yet here he was, just as he had been in the past, with a glass of beer on the table and Napoleon opposite him, and smoke and music filling the air.

'Well, if you'll read the menu...' he said.

((O))

It was wonderful to see what a relaxed, almost normal evening had done for Illya. The meeting with the guys from U.N.C.L.E. had been awkward and difficult. Napoleon would be the first to admit that. He hadn't anticipated it being quite so difficult. But the evening afterwards in the jazz club was perfect. He had watched Illya melt into the music and become lost. For half an hour Napoleon had talked to that extremely pretty, dark-haired girl, and Illya had hardly been aware of their presence. He was happy to leave it like that. He was happy that Illya seemed so absorbed in something and hardly aware of his blindness. While he spoke to the girl he couldn't help glancing repeatedly at Illya, watching his slightly parted lips and the occasional smile, and he thrilled at how content Illya seemed. He hated it when Illya sank deep into depression and drawing him out of it was like bringing him back to life.

'All right now, buddy,' he said as he walked with Illya across the sidewalk to the cab he had just hailed. 'Okay, cab's just in front of you. I'm opening the door.'

Illya was warm and relaxed with alcohol, and although Napoleon had drank a decent amount too, the knowledge that Illya was relying on him helped keep him just sober enough. He watched Illya's head as he got into the cab, ready to put out his hand if it looked like he was going to knock into the roof, and then when Illya slid across the seat he got in himself and told the driver their address.

'Good evening,' he said to Illya, leaning back in the seat. 'That was a good evening, wasn't it?'

He looked across at Illya, who was trying to get his cane into a position where it wasn't in the way. Illya stopped fiddling with the cane and smiled and said, 'Yes, it was a good evening. Yes, I'm glad we came out.'

'Except the bit with the guys...'

Illya snorted and leant back into the seat. 'Yeah, that bit. I never thought people I knew could be so hard to talk to. When George started talking to me about File 40...'

'George tries,' Napoleon said, remembering how awkward George had looked as he tried to talk to Illya. 'He means well.'

'Yes, he means well,' Illya sighed.

Napoleon remembered so clearly standing there in the doorway to Del Floria's, when Illya saw him off on that mission. How worried he had seemed. Napoleon had reached out and smoothed his lapel and then walked away, worrying about Illya worrying about him. But he had been all right. George had done so well for an office man, and Napoleon had been all right, because Illya had come and read his smoke signals and found him. He knew Illya worried about him even more now that he didn't have a partner to come to his rescue. He mostly worked alone now, because no one knew him as well as Illya. An agent needed a partner who knew him so well he could almost read his thoughts.

He needed a new partner, he supposed. But, damn it, he didn't _want_ a new partner. He wanted Illya. He had seen how Illya had been tonight. He had seemed more jealous when Napoleon was discussing missions with the guys than when he had been talking to that girl. Illya had always acted as a chilling douche of water when Napoleon had been flirting with a girl, but now it seemed it was the thought of Napoleon going in to work and going on missions and trusting his life to other men that spurred the jealousy. How could he choose another partner who wasn't Illya? How could he bear to think of living that life without him, risking his life without him?

'I'm sorry, Illya,' he said abruptly. 'I'm sorry it was so awkward with the guys.'

Illya gave a short laugh.

'We should stick to you and me, Napoleon,' he muttered. 'Just you and me. Forget about all the others.'

Napoleon smiled and touched his hand lightly over Illya's on the dark of the seat. He didn't want him to sink down from his relaxed mood into something dark.

'You know, they'll get used to it, Illya. That was the first time. Give them a chance to get used to it.'

Illya shook his head, laughing a little again.

' _I'm_ not used to it,' he said. He lifted his hand and touched his fingers to the cab window, pressing them across the cold glass. 'Where are we, Napoleon? What's out there? I don't like not knowing.'

'We're on Third Avenue,' Napoleon said. 'Just crossed East 42nd.'

'Oh,' Illya said, and he put his hand against the car door again as if he were trying to feel the way the street surface transmitted up into the car body. 'Not far, then. Not far to home. I suppose we're close to my old place,' he said rather wistfully.

'Yeah,' Napoleon said as the cab moved onwards through the familiar streets. 'Hey, why don't we – ' Then he leaned forward and said, 'Hey, thanks, this will be fine. Yeah, drop us here.'

'Huh?' Illya asked, and Napoleon said, 'I thought we could walk the rest of the way. It's a nice night.'

'Oh,' Illya said. 'All right.'

The cab drew in to the kerb. Illya waited while Napoleon got out and paid, then stepped out, tapping his cane onto the ground.

'Where are we?' he asked. 'Are we right by my place?'

'Just down the street,' Napoleon said, letting Illya take his arm. The cab engine rumbled into life, and the car drew away. They were alone on the dark street. 'Listen, Illya. I'm sorry – Well, sometimes I'm sorry I made you give that place up. I put a lot of pressure on you when you weren't in a fit state – '

'It doesn't matter,' Illya said quickly. 'I've lived in plenty of places. I'm happy where I am now.'

'We are happy, aren't we?' Napoleon said.

'It's all fine,' Illya assured him. 'It's just fine.'

'You think you'll be all right tomorrow?' Napoleon asked, because a mission was sending him out of town, and he hated leaving Illya when he was in the type of dark, listless mood he had found him in earlier.

'I'll be perfect tomorrow,' Illya promised. 'You've been out of town before. I will be fine.'

'Come on,' Napoleon said, and Illya followed his arm, his cane tapping left and right in front of him, the sound sharp in the quiet street. 'Look, we're just a few doors down from your place. You remember the trees?'

'Yes, I remember the trees,' Illya smiled. As they walked by one his cane hit the trunk. 'I can feel how the roots push the pavement up.'

'The branches are still bare, but I suppose they'll come into bud soon,' Napoleon told him.

Illya's smile was wistful. 'I suppose I'll be able to hear wind in the leaves, at least,' he said. 'I always liked to see the leaves coming out in the spring. It gave me a sense of hope.'

'God, Illya,' Napoleon murmured. He wasn't sure what to say. He didn't know how to help Illya to live in this world. He thought that telling him what he could see should help, but sometimes it just seemed to make things worse.

'It's all right,' Illya said. He stopped walking, and so Napoleon stopped too. Illya gave a little laugh. 'I could be standing right outside my apartment and I have no idea. I could be anywhere. I'm learning the street outside our place in my own way. The cracks in the pavement and the feeling of the railings on the stoops and where tree roots push up the ground. I only know this one by sight. Everything's very – If I can't hear it, it only counts if it's close enough to feel it. Everything has to be in cane's reach. I suppose I just have to accept that I'm learning a new way of experiencing the world. Leaves in the trees don't matter. The sky only matters if it's raining on me. What matters is what I can feel, what I can hear, what I can smell. It all makes a picture. It's just a different kind of picture.'

Napoleon didn't know what to do with that. The thought seemed so terrible to him. The narrowing of Illya's world seemed so terrible. He wanted to tell him about the glow of the street lights and the windows that were lit up, and the skyscrapers rising above the lower brownstones, and the colour of the night sky. He wanted to tell him that there was a light in his old apartment window, that he could see a woman standing there, looking out, rocking a baby in her arms. But he didn't know what to tell him, what to hold back, what would help him and what would pain him.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's cut across so we can walk by the river. I don't know why I got the guy to drop us here.'

Illya smiled again. 'Well, at least I can hear the water lapping,' he said. 'I can hear metal on the rigging when we walk past moored boats.'

'And that's it?' Napoleon asked, half curious, half sad.

Illya shrugged. 'I haven't spent much time by the water. I know what I can hear from your balcony. There's a great – a great sense of empty space out there. There's no traffic noise. I can't hear the wind hitting buildings. The emptiness and the silence tells me about the space. So I see it in my mind's eye. I see the open water. I suppose I make up what boats might be out there and I remember the buildings across the river. When it rains I can hear the rain hitting the water. It hits the ground near the building, and it's hard and sharp. Then it hits the water further back, and it's a soft, spread out sound, as if all the world is water falling on water. I like that.'

'Well, let's walk by the river, then,' Napoleon said. 'And if it rains at least I'll be glad that it's showing you the water.'

'If it rains, we'll get soaked,' Illya said pragmatically.

Napoleon looked left and right along the empty road and said, 'We're crossing here. Watch for the kerb.' Then he said in a less practical tone, 'If we get soaked I will take you into the shower and warm you up, then I'll dry you in a big, soft towel and take you to bed.'

'You're travelling in the morning,' Illya reminded him. 'And I need to work out what to do with my day.'

Napoleon laughed. 'First, wash the dishes,' he said rather pointedly. 'And then, the world is your oyster.'

((O))

Somehow the thought of Napoleon's early departure faded away when they were huddled down under the covers, flesh against flesh, still pleasantly relaxed from the evening's drinking. Lying skin to skin turned into stroking, stroking turned into kissing, and kissing turned into laying their bodies hard against one another and holding their cocks together in entwined hands, and thrusting into that tangle of fingers until the heat and the firm pressure caused a simultaneous eruption.

Illya lay with his head against Napoleon's, his hand still around their softening cocks, and he sighed, 'God. God...'

He felt as if every bone in his body had turned to honey.

'I thought we were going to sleep,' he murmured.

'I thought we were,' Napoleon replied in a warm, lazy voice. His lips touched Illya's cheek in a soft kiss. 'But then this happened.'

Illya smiled. It felt so perfect lying here in these clean sheets with Napoleon all along his body, pressed against him at the hips. He touched his fingers to Napoleon's face, feeling the light sheen of sweat and the softness of his cheek.

'I wonder what you look like,' he said. 'I wonder what you look like when you come.'

Napoleon laughed quietly. 'Probably just like you. Like any man. Foolish and grateful.'

Illya chuckled in turn. 'Napoleon, don't try to make me believe you were ever so hard up you had to be grateful.'

Napoleon kissed his hair. 'I'm talking about now. Who wouldn't be grateful at the privilege of having the cerebral, icy, extremely beautiful Illya Kuryakin in his bed?'

Illya wasn't sure what to say. He rested his hand on Napoleon's cheek and thought about the sight of what he could feel. It was so much. It was too, too much.

'Hey,' Napoleon said. 'Come on. No brooding, huh?'

Illya let his fingers just rest on that warm skin, feeling the light pulse of Napoleon's blood near his temple, feeling the little rasp of stubble under his palm. 'I'm not brooding,' he said. 'I'm thinking about how right this is.'

Perhaps he was lying a little. Perhaps there was a dark feeling lingering there, trying to push its way through. But he was fighting against it. He tried to push away that awful need to _see_ Napoleon's face and thought about the feeling of him instead, how his heartbeat seemed so close as it trembled through his skin, how Napoleon's warmth warmed every inch of him, how his breathing made soft sighs in the dim light.

'I suppose we should clean up,' he said reluctantly, moving his trapped other hand against Napoleon's belly and feeling the sticky mess there. It was so warm and he didn't want to move.

'You lie there, honey,' Napoleon said, and he rolled away from Illya and slipped out of bed.

Illya lay there, looking into the formless blur above him, wondering if the ceiling had any texture to it, wondering what the light fitting might look like, wondering if it really mattered at all. What did it matter if it were out of reach? Perhaps the light shade was hideous, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter if there were cobwebs in the corners. If Napoleon wanted to paint the walls olive green or choose a garish wallpaper it didn't matter. They could find things to argue about, he was sure, but décor wasn't one of them.

'What are you dreaming about?' Napoleon asked, and Illya grunted, blinking.

'Nothing,' he murmured. 'Nothing at all.'

Napoleon folded back the blankets and touched a warm, damp cloth to Illya's skin, cleaning him off and then patting him dry with a towel. He tossed the cloths onto the floor with a soft thump.

'You're always thinking about something,' he said, 'but you were smiling, so I won't worry about it. Shift over, lover. Let me into bed.'

So Illya moved across the mattress a little and Napoleon got back into bed with him and came to lie against him again.

'Ugh, you're cold,' Illya murmured, but he draped his arms over Napoleon's chilly skin, and warmed him up.


	16. Chapter 16

He was aware, dimly, of the feeling of Napoleon's lips on his cheek as he said goodbye. He was aware of the alarm clock trilling into the room, but he didn't react because he knew it wasn't for him. Then Napoleon rolled closer, ran a hand over his body, kissed him, and then rolled away. He lay in bed half asleep, listening to Napoleon moving in the room, going and doing things in the kitchen and bathroom, then coming back into the bedroom. His lips touched Illya's cheek, and he said, 'I'll see you later, sleepyhead. Don't wake up. When you do wake up, do the dishes.'

Illya subsided back into sleep, and he didn't hear Napoleon leave. He sank into a vivid dream. He was in Paris, back at the Sorbonne, but somehow an agent for the U.N.C.L.E. already. He needed to finish his essay so he could graduate. Everyone else had finished. His was the only one. He was searching for paper and pen but they were nowhere to be found. He was feeling and feeling, pushing his fingers into drawers, flicking through books of incomprehensible type. He was walking down a long street looking for the stationary shop but it wasn't there. Everything was so vivid. The morning sun was stretching gold down the street, the Eiffel Tower was there in the distance, somehow always visible, so sharp against the sky. He was walking with his hands out, feeling, bumping into people, but he could see so clearly, everything was so bright, the colours so strong...

He woke, feeling the cotton sheets and the thick covers, seeing the vague rose of light through his eyelids. But he could see, he could see, he opened his eyes and –

It was like being knocked back to the ground just after struggling upright. There was the blur, all around him. His heart seemed to lurch and subside. He was blind after all, still blind, always blind. He closed his eyes and clung to the bright and vivid images in his dream, clinging to them so hard that he gradually dropped back into sleep.

He woke later and reached out for the alarm clock and pulled it under the bedclothes to feel the hands. It was almost ten o'clock. He shoved the clock back onto the night stand and lay there breathing in the scent of cigarette smoke and alcohol that hung about him. It had been a long time since he had smelt that. Such a long time since he had enjoyed a night out like last night.

He pulled himself out into the chill outside the bedclothes and wondered what to do with himself. There were the dishes, of course. He remembered Napoleon chiding him about that. So he showered and dressed and then went into the kitchen and put his hands carefully to the surface by the sink, feeling what was there. He had discovered there wasn't a lot of point in exhaustively trying to work out exactly what was on the counter. It was better just to work through it. Napoleon was very good now at separating glass, cutlery, crockery, and pans, so he could wash up in the best order, and everything was always put within an area marked off by a narrow strip Napoleon had applied to the counter. If it wasn't within that limit, Illya assumed it was clean.

He never knew quite what to do with himself on the first morning when Napoleon was out of town. He was glad he wasn't sunk in yesterday's depression, but still, he felt at a loose end. After he had washed up he sat down with a braille book from the library and ran his fingers over the first few pages, practising, but his touch felt dull and he kept losing the meaning, and he eventually put the book aside.

He huffed and found his warm overcoat and his wallet, and picked up his cane from by the door. He wondered what the weather was like. He knew it wasn't raining, at least not hard enough to hear. He crossed to the window and put his hand out. No rain. No snow either, and it didn't feel cold enough to make him wear gloves. So he left the apartment and carefully followed the route down to the main door. Past four doors on the right to the elevator. The second to last floor button to avoid the basement level. Then out of the elevator, and turn right, checking the mail box on his way past. Napoleon had stuck a braille label on that too, so he could be certain he had the right one. There was mail, but he would collect it on his way back. He couldn't read it anyway.

He tapped the cane back onto the hard lobby floor and turned towards the door. It had taken him a long time to shake off his self-consciousness at the noise that his cane made as he walked. He still felt self-conscious, but not so much that it prevented him wanting to go out. After feeling trapped for so long, it was amazing to be able to go alone out of the apartment.

He gave a little laugh as he pushed open the door to the street. How crazy it was to feel that stepping out of the apartment alone was an amazing thing, a triumph. Hadn't he climbed Mount Whitney and the Matterhorn? Hadn't he trekked in the Himalayas? Hadn't he walked through deserts, jungles, snowy wildernesses? But it was amazing to be able to leave the apartment, seeing nothing, and walk around the block.

The cold hit his face and the traffic noise increased, and he reached for the rail and slipped his cane to the edge of the first step. He walked down the stoop with his hand on the rail and turned to the right. A few paces away the pavement rose up a little where a tree root tunnelled under it. There were four of those rises at equal distances, and the feeling of the bulk of the trees on his left, and then a stoop on his right with a broken corner on the bottom step. There. His cane touched the roughness. He knew exactly where he was. Next there was a lamppost on his left that had rusted at the base. It was closer than he had expected. He was verging a little left, expecting to find it, and he re-adjusted his course. There was the crack in the pavement that went diagonally across. Another rise for a tree root, but with this one there was no sense of a tree, because the tree had been cut down and there was nothing left but a very low stump. Then the ground was smooth, which was broken after a few yards by a change in surface, as if that part of the pavement had been repaired or altered. There was a fire hydrant, another stoop, and that was the last of the residential buildings. Next there was the grocery store on the corner, and he had walked to the end of the block.

He turned in to the grocery store, finding the doorway by running his cane along the wall of the building until it dipped into the recess. He stepped a few yards inside and was only standing there a moment before he heard the voice of Mrs Lui, who owned the store, saying, 'William, come take my place. I need to help Mr Kuryakin.'

He smiled. Ever since he had started making his forays out around the block, and stopping in occasionally at the store, Mrs Lui had appointed herself his guide. She came to him and touched his arm and said, 'Mr Kuryakin, what can I find for you today?'

'Just a loaf of bread,' he said. 'Wholemeal. That's all. We ran out this morning.'

'Then you stand there and I'll get your loaf,' she told him.

She was back after a moment and put the loaf in his string bag, then touched his arm to guide him to the counter. He got his wallet out and felt carefully at the bills. They had told him different ways of telling the bills apart at the rehabilitation school. He could fold each type differently, or put them in different places in his wallet, or put them in separate clips marked with braille to separate the denominations of notes. He intended to do that eventually, but at the moment he had the ones pushed into one pocket, fives and tens in others. As long as he took the bills from the right pocket it would be fine.

'Er, here,' he said, separating off a dollar bill, he thought, and holding it out. 'That's a dollar, yes?'

'Yes, that's a dollar,' Mrs Lui told him. Her hand brushed his as she took the money. The cash register rang and he heard her stirring the change. 'And here's your change.'

He took the coins and slipped them into his pocket. He didn't want to stand there laboriously checking change of a few cents. He trusted Mrs Lui. He turned his ear towards where he thought the door was, and asked, 'Do I have a clear path to the door?'

 _Always rely on yourself when it comes down to it,_ his instructors had told him. So when Mrs Lui assured him that he did he still took special care with his cane, heading for that brighter patch of light that marked the front of the shop and very carefully probing ahead to be sure he was going right. The doors were there. He touched the cool glass with his hand, opened them, and stepped out onto the cold street. He stood on the pavement and breathed out slowly. He was facing the street. The apartment was to his left. The end of the block was to his right. He had managed the simple task of buying bread, but he wanted to achieve something more with his morning.

He turned right and tapped across the pavement, past the end of the store building. There was the kerb in front of him. It wasn't entirely straight. He felt along a short length with the cane and tried to remember how it looked. In his experiments so far he had walked around the block, knowing that if he kept turning in the same direction he would end up back outside the apartment. He had walked beyond the end of the block, but only with Napoleon, and his focus was very different when he was walking with a guide.

He took in a breath and lined himself up parallel with the road, trying to take account of the slight slant of the kerb. He listened to the traffic. The street the apartment was on was relatively quiet, but this one he needed to cross was wider and busier. He suddenly couldn't remember if there were any kind of crossing. How stupid it was not to remember that. He had to cross the road, though, and the only way he could do that was by listening to the traffic and waiting for a gap. The cane gave him priority over the traffic, not that he would rely on the traffic obeying that rule. He had practised this at the school. He could do it now.

The cars kept coming both ways, and he stood there, holding his cane ready, listening. And then there came the lull. He stepped off the kerb and struck out across the road, listening all the while, trying to minimise his attention to the sounds of cars further away and only be properly aware of what was close to him. And then his cane tapped the kerb on the other side, he stepped up, and there he was, across the road. He felt as if he had forded a wide river and reached a distant shore.

He brought his memory of the street back to mind. It was ridiculous how fragmented that memory was when he was placed in a situation where he needed to rely on it. But he remembered the words of one of his instructors at the school. _Things will change, Illya. Your memories won't always be your friends. Rely on what you can sense now, not what you remember from the past_.

'Sir? Can I help you, sir?'

He came back to himself, startled. He had been just standing there on the kerb, lost in the success of that crossing.

'Er, no, thank you,' he replied to the young woman.

'Are you sure, sir?' she tried again. 'Are you lost?'

'No, thank you,' he said again as she put her hand on his elbow. He kept his feet firm, afraid that if she turned him at all he would lose his bearings. 'Really,' he continued. 'I am fine.'

'Oh, well, if you're sure...'

She sounded disappointed. Illya stood there waiting for her to walk away, but he had the feeling that she was watching him, waiting for him to move, as if to be sure that he was telling the truth.

'Don't you recognise my voice?' she said then.

'No, I'm sorry,' he said, beginning to get irritated. If she knew him, why couldn't she have just said so at the start? 'I know a lot of people and I can't tell them all apart by voice. You'll have to tell me who you are.'

'Oh, well I'm your neighbour from your floor in the building. I've said good morning to you in the hall.'

'Oh,' Illya said. He had no clear memory of her voice. It wasn't distinctive. 'Well, Miss – er – '

'Oh, I'm Miss Simmons. Andrea,' she told him, and light dawned. Napoleon had mentioned her name before. 'And you're Mr Kuryakin, aren't you?'

'Yes,' he said. 'Well, Miss Simmons, thank you for your offer of help, but really, I am just fine. I'm just taking a walk. Thank you.'

He waited again. He didn't want to start walking as she watched him because it would become obvious that he wasn't familiar with the route, and he really wanted to be left alone to work it out. Finally he decided upon honesty.

'Listen, Miss Simmons,' he said, firmly but kindly. 'I'm just learning how to navigate with my cane and I haven't walked this block alone before. I can manage, but I really need to be able to concentrate. There are a lot of things that I need to be aware of that you probably don't give a moment's thought to.'

'Oh, but I can take you!' she offered again.

'Yes, I know,' he said, trying so hard to keep his voice friendly. 'But then next time I come out alone I'll be in just the same position as I am now. I'm learning to be independent. Can you understand that?'

'Well, gee, of course, Mr Kuryakin,' she said, her voice suddenly changed, somehow sad. Her hand touched his arm again. 'Of course. I'll leave you alone.'

'Thank you,' he said in great relief.

'Well, I guess I'll see you around,' she said in a friendly tone, and he was relieved to think that she wasn't insulted.

'Be sure to tell me who you are,' he reminded her.

He listened to her walk away, and breathed out slowly, trying to reorient himself. He hadn't moved much. He could sense, he thought, the rise of the buildings just ahead and to his right. The traffic was moving again on the road behind him and he could hear the subtle echoes of their engines being baffled by that great rise of stone.

He stepped forward, tapping his cane, looking out for the shoreline of the buildings on one side or the kerb on the other. Then he found it, just to his right, the hard, sharp sound and feel of the stone wall that he remembered visually. He was a little more right than he had thought, but that was all right. There were no stoops on this block, as he remembered. There were a lot of shop fronts and a café a few doors down. If he could make it to the café then he would judge this outing to be a success.

He carried on walking, very aware of every undulation in the pavement, of the feel of the wall to his right, of the doors he passed and the grates in the ground that he stepped over. A rougher patch of concrete. Another metal grate. A pole of some description very close to the building edge. A doorway that he thought was the entrance to a small shop he remembered that sold women's clothes. Then smooth wall and smooth pavement for ten paces, a crack, another crack, another doorway. He paused. Was this the café? He couldn't remember if it were two doors down or three.

He stood there, trying to discern what this door might be. But he realised suddenly that it was the lack of sound that was the clue. Very few doors were utterly soundproof, and if the café were on the other side of the door he would be able to hear something. So he carried on.

Some kind of metal box against the building edge. Stone again, then a downpipe or another pole. A shallow recess that seemed to hold a door made of wood. There were more doors than he had thought. Then the wall again, and – what was that? His cane tapped on something that was solid and sounded like ceramic, standing on the pavement. It must be a plant in a pot. Yes, that was what it was. He reached out his hand cautiously and felt some kind of shrub, spiky with small, shiny feeling leaves. Did that mark the café door, he wondered? He didn't remember plants outside but he knew his memory was not perfect.

He thought he could hear the clink of china and the murmur of conversation. He stepped forward, around the plant pot. His cane tapped against something that felt like glass, not stone. The café had big, modern glass doors. He found where the two doors met, and pushed.

Immediately he knew he was right. There was the scent of food, the chatter of customers, the sounds of cutlery, china, and glass. He stood there for a moment, forgetting, in his relief that he had found the place, that he needed to do more than just stand in the doorway. It felt as if he were facing a maze. Then someone said, 'Hello, sir, can I help you?'

He started, turning to the woman's voice. 'Thank you, yes,' he said. 'Can you help me find a free seat?'

A minute later he was sitting on a chair and the woman, a waitress in the place, was offering to read the menu. He wanted to be able to read the menu himself. A wave of fatigue came over him. It was so terrible, so very terrible, that it had been such a momentous thing to come to this café alone, and that now he was here he couldn't read the menu. He wanted to read a newspaper, the labels on packets and tins in the kitchen, his mail, his newest copy of the National Geographic that was just smooth paper under his fingertips. There were words, words, words everywhere, and he wanted so badly to be able to read them.

'No,' he told the woman who had helped him. 'No, thank you. I'll just have a coffee. Black. Thank you.'

He drank the coffee when it came, savouring it because it was his reward for managing this journey. He thought back over what he had done. Yes, of course it was a ridiculously small thing for most people, for all of those people who still had sight. But he didn't have sight. He didn't have anything but the direction of light. He had only walked a hundred yards, but he had done that without the use of his eyes, and he supposed he should feel proud of that achievement.

'Excuse me, young man. Is this seat taken?'

Illya jerked his head up at that voice, his heart quickening a little. He was certain that he recognised the smooth French accent, but it was so hard without sight. Everything was so damn _hard_ without sight, and he felt so vulnerable. He slipped his hand into his pocket, where his communicator sat, smooth and warm from his body heat, but he also smiled and said, 'You'll have to forgive me. I don't even know how many seats there are at this table.'

'Ah, well, this seat is quite empty,' the man said. 'I shall assume that no one is sitting here.'

The chair legs scraped a little on the floor. The man made a small grunting noise as he folded himself down, and Illya smelt the scent of cigars and aftershave. He _did_ know this man. He _did_ know that voice. He slipped his fingers carefully over his communicator, without removing it from his pocket, and pressed the emergency beacon.

'Victor Marton,' he said.

The man laughed a little. 'Well, I am impressed, Monsieur Kuryakin.' There was a little silence, then he said in a harsher tone, 'Do you expect Thrush to believe this façade?'

Illya gave a bitter little laugh. He took off his sunglasses and folded the arms in and laid them on the table.

'It doesn't really signify whether or not you believe it, Monsieur Marton. That doesn't make it any the less true.'

'Ah,' Marton said. There was the click of a lighter, and flame flickered in front of Illya's eyes as if the lighter were being passed close to them.

'I can see light,' he said rather tartly. He hated to think of the spasmodic movements of his eyes when there was something for them to follow or when floaters moved across his vision behind the white haze. 'That doesn't mean that I'm not blind.'

'Well,' Marton said, and there was a tone of regret in his voice. He was interrupted by footsteps and a waitress asking him what he would like. He ordered coffee, then continued to Illya, 'Really, Monsieur Kuryakin, all of our information agrees with what I see here, but I had to find out for certain. You can understand.'

'Of course,' Illya said dryly.

'Acid damage to your eyes,' Marton continued. 'Very nasty. The man was Calle Svenson, I believe. One of our brightest chemists. Your partner shot him dead.'

'Yes, I know,' Illya said. He couldn't feel a sense of satisfaction or regret about that. It was just a fact. Napoleon had shot that man dead.

'Well. Blinding you was his last act. And I am sorry, Mr Kuryakin. You were a formidable weapon in Alexander's arsenal.'

Illya slipped the sunglasses back on. He didn't like to think of Marton scrutinising his eyes.

'What can one do about fate?' he shrugged.

He hoped that none of his inner feelings about that were coming through. He stilled railed against the fate that had put him in this position. He still went over and over those terrible moments in Stockholm in his head. He still raged at how his life had been turned upside down and sometimes he still missed sight _so_ much.

'It must have been hard for you to say goodbye to U.N.C.L.E.,' Marton said then.

Illya sipped his coffee and then returned the cup to the saucer. He wasn't about to reveal whether or not he had in fact said goodbye to U.N.C.L.E.

'Ah, of course,' Marton said, as if Illya had replied with words rather than silence. 'Well, I came all this way to speak to you specifically, Monsieur Kuryakin, since a little – ahem – bird told me that you were here in this café.'

'Then Thrush is having me watched.' He hated that thought. He hated the thought of eyes on him when he moved about in blindness.

Marton chuckled. 'My dear Monsieur Kuryakin, Thrush is _always_ watching. You must have realised that when we tried to take you in the subway. A crude attempt,' he said sadly. 'Very crude. But it won't surprise you to know that there are different factions in Thrush. There are different ways of doing things. There is a certain honour system among some of us. Some of us would consider you retired from the game. But others – '

Illya gave a tight little smile. 'But others,' he repeated.

'Well, others...'

Illya put his cup down on the saucer again with a little clink of ceramic.

'I assume you have a gun on me,' he said.

'Mr Kuryakin, it would be foolish to assume anything less. Could you give me your communicator, please?'

He sighed, reached into his pocket, and drew out the pen. Marton probably wouldn't be able to tell he had activated the emergency beacon, but he imagined the pen would either be destroyed or left behind. The clack on the table once Marton had taken it made him guess the latter.

'Now,' Marton said. He clicked his fingers and asked for the bill, then when Illya reached for his wallet said smoothly, 'No, you will allow me, of course.'

Illya wondered if there were a way of communicating something to the waitress as Marton paid, but he couldn't think of a thing that he could do that wouldn't put her and everyone else in this place at risk. He couldn't think of a thing that wouldn't put himself at risk. The idea of the unseen gun made his blood run cold.

'Now, let us leave,' Marton said.

Illya got to his feet, holding his cane very carefully. Perhaps leaving behind the string bag with the bread in it would suggest to the waitress that all wasn't well. Perhaps she would just think he had forgotten it.

'Will you let me keep the cane?' he asked.

'Mr Kuryakin, we are not savages,' Marton assured him. 'I will even let you take my arm.'

It felt very strange to be walking out of the cafe holding on to Marton's arm. He felt so vulnerable. Marton took him out through the glass doors and across the pavement, and said, 'We will cross the road, Mr Kuryakin, and then there is a car. You will get into the car.'

He sighed, and followed Marton's guidance, and when they reached the car he slipped in onto leather seats, and laid his cane in the footwell, and then the air tasted strangely sweet and bitter all at once, and then he was asleep.


	17. Chapter 17

'I very much resent having to do this to you, Mr Kuryakin,' Marton was saying.

He felt woozy, dazed. He didn't know where he was. Had he just woken up? He had half a feeling that he might have been awake before, but everything was so confused. The last clear memory was getting into the car, laying his cane on the floor. And then –

He moved his arm instinctively to look for his cane, and found that his wrist, both of his wrists, were bound to the arms of the chair he sat in. He caught in his breath and tried to assess his situation calmly. He didn't think he was wearing his sunglasses. It was curiously hard to tell. The light seemed bright, though. Everything was a bright blur. He moved his legs and found that his ankles were free, at least. He thought he had lost his jacket and tie, but he was still in shirt and trousers. Were they his shirt and trousers? It all felt wrong. He couldn't feel cuffs. Was he wearing a t-shirt?

'We replaced your clothes, of course, to remove anything we think might contain those devilish U.N.C.L.E. devices,' Marton explained, and Illya shifted uncomfortably at the thought of being stripped naked while unconscious. But Marton, he thought, was a decent, old fashioned type, unlikely to have made or allowed any violation of his body. Still, it made him shiver.

'Resent?' he asked, remembering what Marton had said first. 'Why? What are you going to do to me?'

'As I said, Mr Kuryakin, some of us consider you out of the field. We play fairly, even if our goals are somewhat immoral by your standards. I would have you left alone, but my orders come from higher up.'

'Ah,' Illya said. It was a curious feeling. He sensed Marton held a certain amount of respect for him, and he didn't want to be interrogated by Thrush, of course, but he felt an odd little sense of gratitude to whichever Thrush man or woman had decided blindness didn't put him completely beyond usefulness.

'Mr Kuryakin, we are working under the assumption that you haven't been erased of your U.N.C.L.E. knowledge since your injury?' Marton asked.

Illya stayed silent.

'Of course,' Marton said. 'I don't expect you to be forthcoming.'

He wondered if it were just the two of them in the room. Marton had said _we,_ and it would be stupid to assume he was all alone in this, but that didn't mean there was anyone else in the room. He wondered what this room was, where it was. He tried to control feelings that wanted to race out of control at being here in this situation, bound and blind and helpless.

'I do understand that you must feel uneasy,' Marton said softly.

There was a noise, perhaps of a chair being pulled across a carpet. Illya had only socks on, no shoes, and he could feel the carpet under his feet. There was a creak; Marton sitting down, very close to him.

'It might be easier if you just tell me the U.N.C.L.E. entry codes and other specifics,' Marton said. 'You'll be pleased to know I'm not a torturer by nature, but I will use drugs if necessary, and I don't like to use drugs.'

'No, I don't like you to use drugs either,' Illya murmured. 'And I don't like not knowing where I am or who is here.'

Marton chuckled lightly. 'I don't like taking advantage of your handicap, either, Monsieur Kuryakin, but it is there and there's nothing I can do about it, so it would be foolish of me to give you more information than you need. Now. I have a hypodermic in my hand, Monsieur Kuryakin. It would be best for you to hold still.'

His hand touched Illya's arm, just at the crook of his elbow. He flinched a little as a cool swab was brushed over his skin, and then there was the sting of a needle.

'Truth serum,' he said.

'Of course. What else?'

He exhaled slowly. He hated truth serum. He hated the way it made him feel. But at least with truth serum he had a chance. Ever since that previous incident with Marton and Miss Belmont U.N.C.L.E. had been working on ways to resist these things, and the last breakthrough had been a form of deep hypnosis which created a block even under strong doses of drugs.

'I don't like truth serum,' he said.

Marton chuckled. He sounded very far away. Illya felt very sleepy. He felt as though he were falling, as though the chair were spinning around and around. He felt as if he were going to be sick.

'Why don't you like truth serum, Monsieur Kuryakin?' Marton asked softly.

Illya felt a little flick at his cheek, as if Marton were flicking him with his nail. It felt numbed and far away.

'Because it makes me feel like hell,' he said. He could hear his voice starting to become slurred but he couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't stop himself talking. The compulsion to answer Marton was so strong. 'Don't like being out of control.'

He could feel the truth falling from him like water. It was so easy to tell the truth.

'Do you like me, Monsieur Kuryakin?'

Illya made a face. 'Not very much at the moment,' he said, because it was Marton's fault that he felt sick, that he felt scared, that he felt so ill. 'No. Don't like you right now.'

He felt Marton's fingers on his pulse. He felt lightheaded. He felt so sick.

'Tell me about U.N.C.L.E.,' Marton said.

There was a strange sense of focus. That was the word. That was the trigger word to make everything about the organisation drift down and down and be locked behind a wall.

'I had two uncles,' he mumbled. 'Дядько Ваня і дядько Саша.'

'Now, Monsieur Kuryakin, please speak English,' Marton said. He sounded impatient, and Illya didn't like that.

'Uncle Vanya,' Illya murmured, trying hard to use his English. He remembered opening the apartment door, Uncle Vanya being there, bringing the cold in with him, big smiles and chill hugs. Oh, how long ago that was… How bright all the colours were, how vivid... 'Uncle Vanya used to bring me sweets...'

Oh, Kyiv had been so beautiful… He remembered swans, ice, bright sunshine, blue sky. He remembered the day when his mother crouched down, white as a ghost, and told him Uncle Vanya had been killed, tears running down her face. He remembered the grey-helmeted soldiers in the streets, burnt, black shells, grey ash… Uncle Sasha was never the same again...

'The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement,' Marton said.

His voice was a faint thing through the memories. There were tears on Illya's cheeks. He felt so sick, his stomach churning and roiling. Marton was touching his arm, pressing it hard, and there was another sting, and suddenly he was vomiting and Marton was exclaiming in disgust. He was falling, falling backwards, the chair was spinning, and Marton kept asking him questions and questions...

((O))

He was lying on his side on something soft. There was a scent of vomit and his head ached so badly it could have been split in two. He moaned and pressed a hand against his head – and suddenly remembered. Marton. The truth serum. He thought that the U.N.C.L.E. hypnosis had worked, but hypnosis didn't help with the headache and nausea, and the foul taste in his mouth.

He moved, rolling onto his back, feeling a sheet under him, a thin blanket over him. There was a pillow under his head. The bed wasn't wide, but it was comfortable. It was light in the room, a light like daylight. Room? Was this a Thrush cell? It didn't feel like it, it didn't smell like it. He swung his socked feet over the side of the bed and they touched a carpeted floor. He sat there for a moment, feeling decidedly nauseous, and then pushed himself to his feet.

It took far too long to search the room, because he was so sick and disorientated. There was a window with curtains, a night stand with a lamp on it, a chest of empty drawers, and a decidedly locked door made of varnished smooth wood in panels. He touched the spherical china handle and pressed his fingers over the lock, and it felt like an ordinary, old fashioned keyhole. So, where was he? This wasn't a purpose built Thrush den. Was this Victor Marton's house? Could he had been taken to France while he was unconscious? But it was more likely that Marton had a place somewhere near New York, or had rented somewhere. If he had rented somewhere, it was probably not as well protected as a permanent home or Thrush base.

That lamp… He moved back to the bed and sat down. For a few minutes he just sat there, holding his aching head, trying to settle the dizziness and nausea. The disorientation was starting to dissipate a little. He reached out for the lamp on the night stand. It had a fluted fabric shade and a ceramic base ridged with little patterns. He found the cord and traced his fingers down it until he found the place where it was plugged into the socket. He pulled it out and felt very carefully over the prongs and the shape of the plug. French plugs weren't very different from American ones, but he was almost certain that this was American. The prongs were flat, not rounded.

He put his hands back to the lamp, carefully taking out the bulb and then removing the shade. There was wire in it, and that was what he needed. He managed to strip a useful length from the bottom of the shade and bent it into a hook, and then went back to the door. He slipped his fingers over the lock again and inserted the wire. It was the work of a moment to delicately get the sense of the lock, and pop it open. He would never have chosen to be blind in a situation like this, but he had to admit that it gave him some advantages. He couldn't imagine that such a formidable opponent as Victor Marton would have underestimated him so badly if he could see. But then if he could see…

A cold and helpless feeling ran through him. He had the door unlocked, but what now? He had no idea where he was. How in hell could he get out of this place when he couldn't see walls, doors, guards, _anything_? He wasn't an agent any more. He couldn't be an agent…

He pressed his forehead against the cool panelling of the door, and drew in a deep breath. He had been an agent. He still had all his agent's knowledge, all his instinct, and a lot of his skill. He had opened his door. He needed to get out of the room and get out of the house. Perhaps if he found the front door he could find some kind of walking stick or umbrella to serve as a cane. Things like that were often kept by the door. If not, perhaps outside he would find a stick, depending on what outside was like. He didn't even know if he were in town or the countryside, but he thought the lack of noise filtering in suggested countryside. If he could get outside and get far enough away he could find someone to help him.

He went back to the night stand and found the loose bulb and smashed it so it was just the metal fitting with a jagged rim of glass that could be held to someone's throat. Not the best weapon, but better than none. He moved back to the door and stood there for a moment, very still, listening, and then he slipped the door open and stepped through it. He could feel his heart beating against his ribcage, but he stood motionless, trying to get a sense of what was around him. The carpet continued into this hall. He thought it was a hall, because the space felt constrained. He moved forward, arm outstretched, and after a step his fingertips touched a wall in front of him. Yes, this was a hall.

This was so hard… He stood still, listening, trying to tell if there were anyone anywhere in the house. The idea of people with guns who could see him when he couldn't see them made him very nervous. He thought he could hear noises from lower down. So maybe he was on the first floor, and there was someone downstairs… Was that the noise of a gramophone he could hear? It came from the left, and so did a slight draught. So perhaps that way lay the stairs…

If he stretched out both arms he could touch both sides of the hall, and he did so, tracing the fingertips of one hand along the wall, holding that smashed bulb in the other and running his knuckles over the wallpaper on the other side. He stepped very carefully, feeling the sudden ridge of a door frame, the dip of the wooden door, the loose edges of picture frames. And then – nothing on his right. Just air. He moved his hand about, felt the corner of the wall as it turned away from him. He slipped his foot forwards, sideways, felt the place where the carpet dropped into the shape of a stair. The light was a little brighter here. Perhaps there was a window somewhere. Perhaps these stairs were facing the main door. That was the usual arrangement, wasn't it?

He found the rail on the other side of the stairs. One step, two steps, three. He was making his way slowly down, hand on the rail, socked feet slipping carefully down each step. Would there be a guard down there? Was there someone down there now, watching him and laughing silently at his attempt to escape?

And then he heard a door latch click. He reacted instantly, pressing his back against the wall and freezing, holding the metal end of that bulb ready in his hand. The door was somewhere below him, and it had opened. There were footsteps on a hard floor. He heard the click of a gun being readied. And then there was a sudden burst, running, voices, more doors opening. He didn't think he'd been seen, they didn't seem to be directed towards him, so what was happening? Did he – Did he _recognise_ one of those voices?

'All right, Marton, put it down!'

The order was muffled by distance and objects but intelligible enough. My god, these were U.N.C.L.E. men… He heard doors banging and a commotion from another room, but he didn't dare make a sound because he didn't know who might be there. Footsteps came into the downstairs hall again, there was a tread on the stair, and then –

'Illya! Bloody hell, Illya!'

He stayed absolutely still, holding that jagged broken bulb, because he couldn't see and he didn't know what was going on. And then the person was coming up towards him and putting a hand on his arm and saying, 'Illya, you bugger, trust you to spring yourself without help! Are you all right? Hey, careful with that!'

'Oh,' Illya said, remembering the bulb. 'Sorry, I – Mark? It's Mark, isn't it?'

'Yeah. You want me to take that before you glass me in the face with it?'

Now he was with someone who had a gun he felt easier. He smiled and offered the bulb up, and Mark tossed it away.

'Listen, come down the stairs,' he said. 'You're okay?'

'Yes. Let me take your arm,' he said quickly, feeling and finding the crook of Mark's arm.

'Look, Illya, I think that's your cane leaning up in the hall. Are you okay with the stairs, because I can go and get it?'

'Yes, I'm okay. Is the house secured?' he asked, wary of walking down into a fight. He was concentrating on the stairs because his socked feet made the carpet slippery.

'Ground floor's all secured,' Mark said, urging him downwards. 'How in hell did you get yourself out? Should I expect to find unconscious guards up there?'

'I don't know if there's anyone up there. I ripped a wire out of the light shade and picked the lock.'

'Bloody typical,' Mark said with a laugh. 'Look, watch it, there's a corner here. Stairs turn through ninety degrees left. Got that?'

'Yes, I've got that,' Illya said.

The handrail had shown him the turn before Mark mentioned it. He followed him down, keeping one hand on the handrail and one on Mark's arm until he reached the cool, hard floor of the downstairs hall.

'You said you saw my cane?'

'Yeah, in the umbrella rack if you'll believe it. Hang on – '

Mark let go of him and moved away, and was back in a moment, putting the cane to his hand. His relief at getting hold of it was ridiculously large. He felt as if he were suddenly less blind.

'How did you find me?' he asked.

'Followed your emergency beacon to that café. Lady there said you'd left with a tall Frenchman. She'd been impressed by the car, so she had a good description. Turns out a few people were impressed. Marton's a clever man, but he's vain. It's not too hard to track a Silver Ghost.'

Illya raised his eyebrows. 'Oh, is that what it was?'

'That's what it was. Besides, you had a homing beacon in your sunglasses.'

'Oh,' Illya said at that revelation, wondering what to think about that. Instinctively he felt angry. He would have to talk to Napoleon later. Now wasn't the time. He supposed he should be glad, but he wished that Napoleon had told him. 'I spent the whole of the ride unconscious. The last thing I remember is the smell of the leather seat as I fell over onto it. I don't know where I am. I don't even know how long I've been here.'

'About twenty four hours. Come on,' Mark said, nudging his arm. 'We're not far out of the city. I'll drive you back to HQ. You don't look too well.'

Illya grimaced. 'I don't feel too well,' he said. 'He used a truth drug on me.'

He had almost forgotten the after effects of the drug in the adrenaline rush, but it was all coming back. The light was painful to his splitting head, and his stomach was still roiling.

'I don't suppose you've found my glasses?' he asked. 'Or my shoes, for that matter?'

'No, mate. I don't say they won't, but I haven't seen them. Never mind. Oh, Doyle,' he said as someone came into the hall, and the man replied, 'You got him out, then. Is he all right?'

'Yes, he's all right,' Illya said in something close to a growl. 'He got himself out. He's about to leave.'

'Yeah, er, you can take over the team,' Mark Slate put in. 'I'm going to drive Illya back into town.'

Illya was a bit too tired for prickling too much at being referred to indirectly yet again, but he tapped the cane onto the ground with extra force and held Mark's arm as lightly as possible as they exited the house. He wished he could drive himself.

'There's no cure for being a twat,' Mark said in a low voice to Illya as the door closed behind them, and Illya didn't try to stifle his laugh. It felt good to laugh.

'Take care. It's a gravel drive,' Mark warned him. He could feel it through his socks as soon as he stepped onto it. The ground was freezing cold and he was shivering in his light trousers and t-shirt. He walked gingerly over the gravel until Mark said, 'Okay, we're at the car,' and instead of opening the door for Illya he just put his hand to the door handle.

'You know, you're the first person in months who hasn't opened the door for me or told me to watch my head as I get in,' Illya said as he settled himself into the seat and Mark joined him in the front.

Mark chuckled. 'Yeah, well, you're a big boy and I think you can look after your own head. I reassessed things a bit after the other night,' he confessed. Keys jangled in the ignition and the engine burst into life. 'None of us knew what to say that night. I think it was a bit of a shock to see you. We all knew what had happened but it's different face to face. Then I realised you probably just wanted us to treat you like we always did.'

Illya smiled. 'That's what I want,' he said.

It was futile to pretend that everything was the same, as he tried to find a place to prop his cane and sat there trying to work out what kind of car this was and without being able to look across at Mark's face. But it made it so much easier to not have the fact of his blindness reflected to him in every word and action of those around him.

'You want to rocket it?' Mark asked as the car turned from the crunch of gravel onto the smoothness of tarmac.

'Huh?'

'It's a long, straight road and it's completely empty, mate. You want to go for a bit of a spin? Do you feel up to it?'

'Hang on a moment. I don't want to be sick on your seats.'

Illya wound down the window and felt to see if there were a lap belt, but there wasn't.

'What the hell,' he said. 'Yes, I want to go for a bit of a spin.'

So the revs started to climb up and he heard the gears changing, and the wind started to billow in through the window, whipping over his face, slapping in freezing gusts across his aching head.

'Fifty,' Mark was saying steadily, 'Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety. Hey, you okay?' he asked in a shout, patting a hand on Illya's leg.

'Perfect,' he replied, keeping his face to the open window. He pushed out a hand and caught the air in his palm. It was so good to feel that edge of danger. He trusted Mark's driving implicitly, but speed was such a thrill.

'Hundred and five,' Mark said in a shout of joy.

There was the bellow of a horn, wavering in the doppler effect, and Illya asked, 'What the hell was that?'

'Lorry on the other side. Seemed to think we were going a bit fast. Did you know you can still make out the middle finger when you're going past something at a hundred and ten?'

Illya laughed out loud. He felt so alive. And then Mark was gradually reducing the speed, saying, 'They frown on it when you go through the towns at this speed.'

The wind started to calm. He could catch his breath again. He drew his hand in from the window and his fingers were freezing.

'Thanks,' he said. As the wind lessened the headache and nausea were creeping back. He was so glad that Mark had done that for him, but he was stabbed through with a thin spear of pain because he so, so wanted to be able to take the wheel and do that himself.

'Hey,' Mark said, touching his thigh again.

'I'm okay,' he said. 'I'm all right. It's just – '

'Hard?'

'Hard,' he nodded. It was so hard to have to readjust all of his expectations and ambitions and reactions to the world.

'I know, mate,' Mark said. 'I know.'

Did he really know? Illya appreciated the sympathy. It was different from pity. It was a sharing instead of a looking in through a glass window. But did Mark really know?

'Listen, we'll try doing that evening again some time,' Mark said. 'Without all the daftness. Yeah? Sod the others. Bring Napoleon if you like, or just you and me. We'll go to a bar and get smashed. Americans don't know how to drink properly. It's a hundred times better drinking with you. Sound good?'

Illya smiled. 'It sounds very good.'

It did sound good. It sounded like a way back to the person he used to be. Maybe he could be that person again.

((O))

'Jesus, Illya. I go away for five days...'

Napoleon's hands were on either side of his head, holding his hair, pulling him close. Napoleon's lips pressed hard against his and he let himself fall for a moment, just drowning in the taste of Napoleon's mouth.

'Five days,' Napoleon said. 'You were supposed to wash the dishes and have a quiet day. You were supposed to spend the week going to college and coming home and getting take out and maybe calling me in the evening. You weren't supposed to be captured by arch Thrush villains and you were _definitely_ supposed to call me when you got out. I shouldn't have found out about it from bumping into Mark in the corridors.'

'I didn't want to worry you,' Illya said. He didn't want to do any of this. He just wanted to catch Napoleon's lips again and tug and push him into the bedroom and tumble onto the bed with him.

' _Worry_ me?'

Illya shrugged. 'He knocked me out, he took me to his house, he gave me truth serum. The truth serum didn't work – Mr Waverly was very pleased with the test of that new hypnosis, by the way – and then I got myself out – '

'You _got_ yourself out?'

Illya straightened himself up. 'Of course I got myself out. I picked the lock. I was coming down the stairs when Mark's team broke in.'

' _Illya_! You're not supposed to – You should have – '

Illya bridled then. 'Napoleon, I am an _agent._ At least, I was an agent. If you think I was going to sit in that room like Rapunzel and wait for rescue – '

'Illya, you're – ' Napoleon didn't complete the sentence, but Illya could hear the word hanging in the air. Blind. _You're blind_.

'I am a _man_ ,' he snapped. 'Just like I always have been. Napoleon, were you ever going to tell me you put a tracking device in my glasses?'

'Oh,' Napoleon said in a small voice. 'Illya, I'm – I should have said, I know. After the attack on the subway...'

'You could have _asked_ me,' Illya pressed. 'Napoleon, what did you think I'd do? I've been worried after the attack on the subway too. Perhaps I wouldn't have minded. But it was _my_ choice to mind. Do you remember all those weeks ago, when I asked you if you saw me as one of your girls? That's what you would have done to one of _them,_ not to _me_ , Napoleon. Not your partner.'

'I would have expected my _partner_ to call me and let me know he'd been kidnapped by Victor Marton and bust out by Mark Slate and got home safe and well,' Napoleon said tartly.

'No, that's something you'd expect from one of your girls too,' Illya retorted. 'You'd _trust_ your partner that if he's safe, he's safe, and he doesn't need to check in the instant he gets back.'

The anger was like lava inside him. He was afraid of saying something he would deeply regret. He turned away from Napoleon and went through into the kitchen and stood there for a moment in the middle of the room, just breathing deeply, trying to steady himself. He rubbed his hands roughly through his hair, then went over to the counter, scooped coffee into the percolator and filled the reservoir with water.

The door opened behind him.

'Illya,' Napoleon said softly.

Illya stayed facing the counter, shoulders rigid.

'Illya,' Napoleon said again. 'I'm sorry.'

'Are you, Napoleon?' he asked without turning round. 'Sorry enough to not do something like that again?'

'This is new to me,' Napoleon said quietly. 'All of it. Coming to terms with your blindness, especially now you're getting more independent. Coming to terms with a relationship that lasts longer than a few weeks. I'm sorry. I should have told you about the tracing device. For a few weeks after that attack I had some low level guys from HQ keep an eye on you too. I was so worried about them trying it again, but nothing happened. I got the guys from HQ to back off. And I forgot about the tracer in the glasses. Honestly, I did. I should have told you at the time, but I didn't, and then so many things happened – things at work, missions, losing sleep, hopping time zones – that I just forgot. Of course it was down in Records for current tracking devices. That's how Mark knew about it. But I – just forgot. No, I wouldn't always expect my partner to check in, but I would expect my lover to. But I _don't_ see you as one of my girls. I never, ever have. I have _never_ felt for anyone the way I feel about you.'

Illya closed his eyes, listening to the hissing and burbling of the percolator, feeling the smooth, clean counter under his hands. His back shivered with the feeling of Napoleon behind him. He wanted to turn around and take him in his arms. He wanted to turn around and storm out and not come back. He was so angry at Napoleon for making that decision to have him watched, but he could feel his love like a blanket around him. It all felt so tangled inside him.

'I love you too, Napoleon,' he said eventually, and those words felt like a balm. He knew how much Napoleon worried about him. He knew how much he cared. 'But please, _tell_ me if you do these things. _Ask_ me. I feel like I'm just clawing back control over my life. I'm just regaining who I am. I'm not your dependent. I'm not your pet.'

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'I _know_. I know you're a stubborn, independent, intelligent, beautiful man, and I'm an idiot.'

'Not an idiot,' Illya began to protest. His anger had softened. 'Over protective. Occasionally ill advised.'

'All right,' Napoleon said, stepping closer to him. 'All right. Over protective. Ill advised. And very much in love. I'm sorry. I just – '

'Worry,' Illya said, turning around and leaning against the counter. Napoleon felt so close now, but he still wasn't touching him. 'You worry. I know.'

'I always worried about you,' Napoleon said more softly. 'Yes, Illya, even when you could see, I always worried about you. I never had any doubts that you could do your job, but I always worried about you. And now – '

Illya smiled. He lifted a hand, and Napoleon took it.

'I know,' he said. 'I know. I'm not stupid. I know things are different. But I'm not going to give up everything because of this. Not my autonomy, not the abilities I still have. I will not sit in a chair and mourn my life instead of living it.'

Napoleon's lips took him by surprise, catching his, kissing him hard.

'I know,' Napoleon said, raking the tips of his fingers through Illya's hair. 'I know. I'm proud of you. You are so, _so_ strong.'

'No. I'm just me. I've never stopped being me. I know I'll have bad days,' Illya said, cupping his hand against Napoleon's cheek. 'I have bad days, bad minutes, bad hours. I know, I was in a state when you went away. I will be again. I'm not stupid. I'm the one living through this, and it's _so_ hard sometimes. But it's getting easier – and little moments like that, getting myself out of that room, driving back with Mark – they show me that I'm still alive. I don't need sight to be alive. I miss it, but I can live without it.'

'All right,' Napoleon said, taking Illya's hand from his cheek, kissing his palm and then his wrist and then the inside of his elbow. 'All right. You're still alive, and so am I. I'm contrite and you're right. I'm going to be sent out of state again tomorrow, so what do you want to do today?'

Illya grinned. 'I want to fuck you over the kitchen table,' he said. 'And then I want to have coffee. And then I have to go to class.'

Napoleon's laugh was a bright, ballooning thing that filled the room.

'All right,' he said. 'All right. Fuck me over the kitchen table. Then we'll have coffee. And then I'll drive you to class.'


	18. Chapter 18

Illya opened the tall glass doors and stepped out onto the balcony, turning his face up to the first pale warmth of spring sunshine. The sun had been warmer coming in through the windows than it was out here, but it was pleasant on his skin. He rested his hands on the railing, feeling the warmth of the metal. It was painted black, perfect for soaking up the sun. It was good to feel that warmth brushing over his face and seeping into the palms of his hands. He moved his hands across the railings a few times, stroking the metal, feeling the imperfections in the paint, the places where rust was trying to erupt. Did it matter that he couldn't see it?

He had stood out here so many times in the early days when Napoleon insisted he needed to get some air, desperate and hopeless and heavy with the crushing fact of his blindness. He had been in a kind of whole-body blindness then, he thought. His eyes hadn't worked, but his other senses just hadn't been used to filling in the blanks. He hadn't been listening properly. He hadn't been so aware of what was around him. It wasn't that his other senses had miraculously grown more acute, but just that he had grown more used to using them and understanding the messages they relayed.

He could hear cars in the streets. He could hear footsteps and people talking. He could hear the scutter of a piece of paper being blown across the hard ground. There was the drone of a plane above him, and the thrum of a helicopter further away. There were the noises of the boats out on the river, the chugs of engines and the slap of the bow into the water, and the occasional more subtle creak and clank of a sailing boat cutting through the channel. He couldn't hear the trees yet. He supposed that would come when the leaves came out and there happened to be strong enough wind. But everything seemed to be alive with noise, and the noise wasn't blocked away from him as it had used to seem by the opaque façades of buildings or by dint of the fact that it was behind him or above him. The thump and occasional wail of music in another apartment didn't seem so closed off to him as it had when he could see. The shouts of children from down the street didn't seem remote. Everything seemed immediate and vital and connected.

He turned back inside and got his coat and slipped wallet and keys into his pocket. It seemed easy now to set the alarm and lock the door and walk down to the elevator and then through the lobby and down the stoop into the street. He had walked around the block so many times, practising. The short walk to the shop was easy as long as he was left alone by passers-by who wanted to help. He still floundered sometimes when he was distracted. But he reached the shop and bought the milk and bread he needed, and turned around to make his way back to the apartment.

'Well, Mr Kuryakin! I was just coming to see you!'

Illya stopped abruptly on the pavement at the sound of such a familiar voice.

'Uh – Mr Waverly, sir?' he asked.

'Yes, indeed, Mr Kuryakin. I'll walk back with you.'

'Oh – er – yes,' he said.

He suddenly felt disconcerted. Was that the second tree he'd walked past, or the third? He was on the spot. Waverly would be watching him to see how he managed. How could he concentrate on where he was but also concentrate on Waverly walking alongside him?

He stood still, brow furrowed, thinking.

'If you need some help, young man – ' Waverly began.

'No,' he said, frowning, then said more politely, 'No, thank you. I just need to get my bearings. Just give me a moment.'

He trusted Waverly to understand his need to do this without help, and Waverly bore him out on that trust. He said, 'Of course, Mr Kuryakin. Take all the time you need,' and took a few steps backwards and stood in silence.

Illya exhaled. He needed to get this right now. He didn't know if it were the second tree or the third, but he would be able to work it out. The bumps in the pavement felt different. They were at different angles. He didn't usually walk back this way; usually he walked round the block clockwise and went to the shop on the way; but he could work it out.

He moved his cane across the pavement, feeling the roughness, and began to walk. There was the next swell in the pavement. It moved diagonally, closer to his left foot than his right. A sense of triumph rose in him. He _knew_ that. Even backwards, he knew it. It was the third tree. He closed his mind to Waverly's presence and walked on, concentrating only on the feedback from his cane and listening out all the time. There was the fourth tree. And there, there was the stoop, sticking out onto the pavement. There was the rail on the left hand side with its familiar little patches of flaking in the paint. He walked up the stairs and took out his key, and heard Waverly mounting the steps behind him, grunting a little with effort.

'I'm impressed,' Waverly said, patting a hand onto his shoulder. 'Very impressed, Mr Kuryakin.'

Illya allowed himself a smile as he touched his fingers over the keyhole and then slid in the key. He was only absolutely certain that he had got the right stoop when his key turned in the lock. He opened the door and gestured his boss in to the warmth of the lobby.

'Sir?'

'Thank you, Mr Kuryakin. Thank you.'

Waverly passed him and waited as Illya went to the mailboxes, found his and Napoleon's, and took out the mail. They travelled up in the lift together and Illya led Waverly to the front door and let him in, moving quickly to the alarm to punch in the code before it sounded.

'Most impressed,' Waverly said, as if there had been no pause, as Illya leant his cane against the sideboard by the door and put the letters down in a small pile.

'Thank you, sir,' Illya smiled rather awkwardly. 'Can I get you some coffee? Or tea?'

'Oh, tea, of course,' Waverly said quickly. 'I suspect you value a good cup of tea as much as I do, Mr Kuryakin.'

Disappearing into the kitchen gave Illya a few moments to compose himself. He felt curiously nervous at having to display his new capabilities and any lack of capability in front of Waverly. He put the kettle on to boil, spooned tea into the pot, and fetched cups, saucers, and milk. He arranged them all on a tray, and then frowned. He wasn't confident to carry the tray. He couldn't be sure of balancing the milk jug and the teapot without spilling anything, and once both his hands were occupied he became twice as blind, deprived of a hand to feel ahead. He went to the kitchen door after he poured the water onto the tea leaves and said, 'I'm sorry, sir. Can you carry the tray?'

'Oh, of course, of course.'

Waverly came to him immediately and fetched the tray, and Illya followed him back into the sitting room, carefully taking note of where Waverly sat so that he could choose an appropriate seat himself.

'Shall I be mother, Mr Kuryakin?' Waverly asked as Illya took an armchair.

Illya suppressed a smile at the image that conjured up. It would be a relief, though, to have Mr Waverly pour the tea. He wasn't entirely confident with pouring yet, not in front of watching eyes. He couldn't very well put his finger in Waverly's cup to see when it was full like he did with his and Napoleon's.

'If you could,' he said.

He listened to the stream of tea pouring from the pot, and then Waverly said, 'I'm sure you're wondering what's brought me to visit you at home.' China clinked on the table. 'Milk, Mr Kuryakin?'

'Thank you,' Illya nodded.

'Ah, yes. Here's your tea. Now, shall I – ?'

Illya reached out a hand and Waverly's aged fingers touched his, guiding them to the cup.

'Thank you,' he said.

'Not at all,' Waverly dismissed him. 'Well, yes. Why I came. I thought with Mr Solo away again it might be rather easier for you than calling you in to the office. I didn't expect to find you out roaming the streets, of course, especially so soon after your brush with Victor.'

Illya got the impression that he was smiling. 'Well, I'm learning to navigate in the local area, and every bit of practice helps,' he shrugged. 'I can't let Thrush trap me inside.'

'Of course. Of course.' Waverly's voice was a little softened then, slightly regretful. He cleared his throat. 'Well, you might like to know that we released Monsieur Marton with the full impression that you hold very little information about U.N.C.L.E. that would benefit Thrush. I hope they'll learn to leave you alone. But I came to find out how you're progressing with your studies. I'm anxious to get you back on the job, you know.'

'Oh.' Illya suddenly felt incompetent, backward, very blind. He still found it hard to imagine coming back to work. 'Sir, I'm not even sure what I could _do_ for U.N.C.L.E. now...'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Waverly said briskly. 'I've had our research people looking in to what will be needed. We've sourced a braille printer and our men are in the process of marrying it with our computer technology. Our technician thinks he might even be able to manage tactile maps. You won't have a problem getting around the building, but we are affixing braille plates in the lifts and under signs. Accounting has agreed that we can spare salary for an assistant.'

'But what could I – ' Illya began.

Waverly tutted impatiently. 'Intelligence, young man. Intelligence. I must say, you're not displaying an awful lot of that at present, but you'll be invaluable in Intelligence. You'll research missions, assign personnel, form strategies, compile reports. All perfectly possible for the blind. How are you progressing with braille, Mr Kuryakin?'

Illya grimaced. He _was_ progressing, but the progress felt painfully slow.

'I have the basics,' he said.

He rubbed his fingertips together, thinking of the feeling of those little dots embossed on thick paper. It was wonderful to have a way to be able to read again, but at the same time it was so frustrating. It was like going back to being a child, reading painstakingly, letter by letter.

'There's a lot to learn,' he said. 'I can read a page of type, but slowly.'

'Well, I'm sure that will improve,' Waverly said encouragingly. 'I have a great deal of faith in you. Of course an assistant will be able to read to you and take dictation if you're not perfectly fluent. Can you type?'

Illya tilted his head in a kind of shrug. 'I've adapted to typing on a normal typewriter quite quickly. I was already a good touch-typist. I can handwrite using a frame and I'm learning to handwrite braille using a slate. I'm learning to type braille. Like the reading, I'm getting there, but it's slow. It's very different to normal typing.'

'And – getting about – however you might call it. You're getting out on your own. You can get to and fro, I suppose? You must get yourself to the school?'

Illya smiled. 'Yes, I take cabs to the school most trips, but I've been learning about safely using buses and the subway, too, as well as cane travel so I can navigate on foot.'

'Ah, good, good,' Waverly said. 'Well, I've put out some feelers for an assistant and there's a lady coming tomorrow to speak to me about the position. Mr Kuryakin, I'd appreciate your coming to headquarters so that you can form an impression of the woman. Will you be able to get there alone, or shall I have someone come for you?'

'Oh,' Illya said in surprise. 'Oh, I'll – Yes, I'll be able to come alone. I can call a cab.'

'In that case, I'll see you in my office tomorrow at two,' Waverly said decisively. 'You can meet Miss Williams and interview her with me. You'll be capable of coming back alone too, I suppose, if someone puts you into a taxi at our end?'

Illya tried not to grimace at that. He hated the idea of anyone 'putting' him into a taxi; but of course they could hardly invite the cab driver into U.N.C.L.E. to guide him out to the car, and he wasn't confident of that route alone.

'Yes, I can do that, sir,' he nodded. 'I expect I'll need help back to the front entrance but I can get to a cab from there if it's parked outside.'

'Good,' Waverly said. 'Very good. In that case, I had better get back to the office, and you had better get back to your studies, don't you think?'

((O))

Illya sat in the sudden silence once Waverly had gone. While he had been there and talking it was as if he had populated the space. There had been something to focus on and while the rest of the apartment had ceased to exist his presence had made the place seem full. Now it was as if the space around him were simultaneously vast but not there. There was what he could feel, the sensations inside his body, the sensations of what his body touched, the light feeling of air on his face. But he felt alone and adrift. His ease and confidence of earlier felt as though it had evaporated. Everything began to curl in on him; his solitude, his lack of purpose, his lack of ability.

He clenched his fists and punched them lightly onto the arms of the armchair. He pushed himself to his feet. There were the tea things to clear up. That was the first thing to be done. He made sure everything was back on the tray, then picked it up to carry it back to the kitchen. It was lighter now and he could use one hand, using the other to guard against obstacles. He brought it into the kitchen and set it on the worksurface, and then he just sat down at the table and dropped his head onto his arms. How could he come back to work at U.N.C.L.E.? How could he work alongside all of those people who didn't even know how to talk to him? The people who would say, _Oh, poor, dear Illya,_ or _My aunt's second cousin was blind, and –_ The people who would think he could manage nothing, the people who wouldn't know when to help him and when not to help him. He could hardly read and his typing was so slow. How could he do anything at all?

His communicator warbled, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

'Are you alone?' was the first thing Napoleon asked, and he said, 'Yes.'

'Then how are you, little petal?' Napoleon said.

He smiled, leaning back on the dining chair. It was so good to hear Napoleon's voice, even with the ridiculous diminutives he insisted on using.

'I'm all right,' he said.

'All right?' Napoleon repeated. 'Now, how about the truth, huh?

'I'm all right,' he said again. 'Mr Waverly was just here.'

'Here?' Napoleon echoed. 'You mean in the apartment? He came to the apartment?'

'Yes, to the apartment,' Illya confirmed, and then was struck suddenly wondering if there were somehow signs of his and Napoleon's relationship in the apartment. What if Waverly had seen something? 'There – isn't anything in the sitting room, is there? Or the kitchen? I mean, anything that he'd see that – ?'

'No, I don't think – He didn't go in the bathroom?'

'No,' Illya said, then asked suspiciously, 'Why? What's in the bathroom?'

'Nothing, I think. It's just the most likely spot, apart from the bedroom… No, he wouldn't have seen anything, Illya. Don't worry.'

'Well, all right,' Illya nodded.

What could there be anyway? What could there be that pointed towards their illicit relationship instead of a relationship with a woman? Unless he had gone into the bedroom – but the bedroom door was closed. He always kept doors closed so he didn't bump into them.

'All right,' he said again. 'Well, he came to talk to me about my job. He wants to me come in and interview an assistant tomorrow.'

'Oh, that's wonderful!' Napoleon effused.

'Yes,' Illya murmured, but he still didn't know how he was going to work again, how he would possibly manage it.

'Listen,' Napoleon said. 'I hope I'll be back by tomorrow afternoon. I hope I'll catch you at Headquarters.'

'That would be good,' Illya said, but he didn't succeed in keeping the apprehension from his voice.

'Illya,' Napoleon said then. 'Come on. Tell me about it.'

He shook his head. 'I'm being stupid, Napoleon. Nerves, I suppose. Coming back to work – it's a big thing.'

'It's the _right_ thing,' Napoleon said firmly. 'You know that, Illya. It's the right thing. It's going to be strange at first. It's probably going to be hard. But you need your work.'

'Yes, I know,' Illya said.

He couldn't pretend that Napoleon's words had buoyed him up, but he knew the truth of them. He had fallen so suddenly into blindness and felt as if he were swimming in a large, deep ocean. Finally he felt as though he were finding some ground beneath his feet. Going back to U.N.C.L.E. would be like swimming out of his depth again. Everything would be different again. It would be hard...


	19. Chapter 19

'Yes, here will be fine,' Illya told the cab driver. 'If you just tell me which way up or down the street Del Floria's is.'

'We're a little way down the street but the car's moved now, so I could back up and drop you right outside,' the man tossed over his shoulder. 'Sure you don't want taking to the door?'

Illya smiled. 'If you drop me a little down the street it's easier for me to find because I know definitely which way to go. No, I don't need taking to the door.'

'Whatever you say, bud,' the man murmured. 'Well, you're not quite one door down. If you get out here you need to go right, okay?'

'Okay,' Illya nodded.

He found a five dollar bill and offered it forward over the back of the seat, then took his change and picked up his cane from the floor and got out of the car. He stood there for a moment waiting for it to draw away. He wanted to do this without help and without being watched. As soon as the cab left he drew in a deep breath, just standing there on the pavement. It was so strange to be here like this. He had gone back to headquarters with Mark after his abduction by Marton, but that time Mark had driven into the sunken garage and walked with him in through the entrance there and taken him straight to the Infirmary. He had been debriefed after the doctors had taken blood tests to make sure there would be no harmful effects from the truth drug, and then Mark had driven him home. Now he was alone, coming to headquarters just like he had a thousand times, except...

He drew in a deep, steadying breath. It was all still here, he was still here. He just couldn't see it. But the air was just the same, tainted with exhaust fumes. The sounds were just the same. The pavement felt the same under his feet. It was all there. He just couldn't see it.

He exhaled hard, and crossed the pavement. The cane touched railings, and he turned to his right. It was only a few paces before the railings ended in a stone pillar, the cane touched the drop of the steps, and he walked down that oh-so-familiar route to the tailor shop door. He pushed it open, the warm scent of steam billowed, and suddenly Del Floria was saying, 'Mr Kuryakin! Mr Kuryakin, let me help you! So good to see you!'

He smiled rather awkwardly and tried to make for the cubicle before Del Floria could get to him, but then there were hands coming from behind, holding both his arms, steering him and restricting his ability to use the cane. The cubicle curtain pushed smotheringly over his face, and Del Floria put a hand over his, saying, 'I need to activate the press to let you in, Mr Kuryakin. The hook's – '

'Yes, it's all right. I know where the hook is,' Illya said, trying to extract his hand politely but forcefully. 'Thank you. I'll be all right.'

The man patted him on the shoulder. 'Well, just as you say, Mr Kuryakin. Okay. A moment, yes?'

He closed the curtain and as Illya heard the hiss of the steam press from outside he lifted his hand to the hook and opened the thick, heavy door into U.N.C.L.E. reception.

'Oh, my goodness, Mr Kuryakin!'

The reaction as he stepped into the space was immediate and shrill. He didn't know which girl it was on the desk but she was on her feet and coming to him before he had even got the door closed. The scent of U.N.C.L.E. washed around him. It wasn't anything strong, anything he could have described if asked, but it was so familiar and so welcome.

'Mr Kuryakin, it's so good to see you!'

The girl's hands were on his arms and she kissed his cheek, and he smiled awkwardly. He always hated dramatics.

'Yes, it's good to be here Miss – er – I'm, sorry, I – '

'Oh. Marion, Mr Kuryakin. It's Marion Hofstadter,' she told him. 'Mr Kuryakin, I'm so sorry about – '

'Yes. Thank you. Shouldn't you be – er – watching the security monitor,' he said, feeling deeply uncomfortable.

'Oh, I'll turn the screen,' she said, letting go of him and going back to her desk. 'Here's your badge, Mr Kuryakin. We never took it out of the rack.'

She slipped the badge onto his jacket, and he smiled. 'Thank you, Marion. I – er – I need to go to Waverly's office. I might be able to find my way, but – '

He wasn't confident. He wished he could be. He wished he could just stride on in as he always had. But he hadn't walked around Headquarters for a long time, and there were ridiculous little things that he couldn't remember, like how the buttons were set out in the lifts, or just how far down the corridor the first turning was.

'Oh, don't worry, I'll call someone down,' Marion told him quickly, and thirty seconds later there was more effusive gushing, strong perfume, hair tickling his face, and arms tight around him, as another of U.N.C.L.E.'s female personnel hugged him so hard he could hardly breathe.

'Yes, thank you, thank you,' he murmured, trying to work out how to extract himself, how to respond to this strange form of attack. 'Yes, I'm all right. Thank you. Is that – Is that Heather McNabb?'

'Yes, oh, Mr Kuryakin, it's so good to see you back. Marion said you need to go to Mr Waverly's office. Can I – How do I – ?'

He made the decision very quickly. He didn't need guiding, as such. He just needed someone to help him be sure that he could get to the office and use the lifts.

'Just walk with me, please, Heather,' he said. 'I could just do with a pair of eyes in case I get it wrong. I'm not sure about the buttons in the elevators.'

'Oh, they're already all changed to braille,' she told him, touching his arm as he moved towards the exit to the corridor. 'They've just been finished, I think.'

'Oh!' he said in surprise. He wasn't sure if it were reassuring or worrying that Waverly had so much confidence in him, but he supposed it was good. 'Oh, well that's good. Room nameplates too?'

'The signs are being done now, all at hand height, and they're setting up a braille printer in Computing, and got in a stack of special paper, and there're whole boxes of things for your office.' She was talking fast, walking with just her fingers touching his arm, but then she said in a softer voice, 'Mr Kuryakin, how are you managing?'

He took in a little breath, thinking of what to say. 'I'm all right,' he said finally. 'I'm adapting.'

'It must be so – '

'Hard,' he cut in. 'Yes, it's – Oh, is this the elevator already?'

At her affirmative he knocked his cane at the opening door edge and walked in and said, 'Let me try the buttons.'

They were on the left, he remembered. He reached out and found the panel and ran his fingers lightly over the buttons. He could feel the numbers there, raised in cool steel dots. He pressed for Waverly's floor, and the lift jerked into motion. He wondered if Heather would remember what they had just been talking about and whether he was obliged to continue discussing something that felt quite so private with a woman who wasn't much more than an acquaintance.

'I'm doing all right,' he said after a moment, feeling it might be easier if he stayed in control of the subject. 'It's taken a long time but I'm adjusting. Ah,' he said as the doors opened. 'And we're on the right floor?'

'Oh, yes, absolutely,' she said quickly.

Her hand wasn't on his arm any more, and he stepped forward without her touching him at all, determined to not need her help. It was enough to know there was someone there just in case he went in the wrong direction. It struck him suddenly how much this was like walking down the corridors at the rehabilitation school. The echoes were a little different and the smell wasn't quite the same, but it was so similar. Wilcox had told him that he would be able to find his way about the school building with ease very quickly, and he hadn't believed him, but it was true. He had a good memory and he had remembered the layout of the building quite quickly, and now he could walk around as fast as anyone. It would be the same with U.N.C.L.E., he knew, once he had been back at work for a little while.

'Here you are, Mr Kuryakin,' Heather said, just as a door slid open in front of him. 'Shall I – '

'I'm all right,' he said with a smile. 'Thank you, Heather. I can manage now.'

He stood facing the room, which smelt, as usual, strongly of pipe smoke. He smelt coffee in the air as well as he stepped into the room, moving over towards the table.

'Mr Waverly?' he asked.

'Ah, good afternoon, Mr Kuryakin. You got here safely, then,' Waverly replied warmly. 'Now, Miss Williams has just arrived, so I suppose we ought to get down to it. Er – would you like to sit down?'

((O))

It felt rather odd sitting in Waverly's office and interviewing a woman whose job would be to help him with everything he could no longer manage because of his lack of sight. She seemed to have a far better idea of what help he might need than he did. He had never worked like this, whereas she had worked with two other blind people before. Waverly's concern was that she would be suitable for the secret and secure nature of U.N.C.L.E. work. Illya's concern was that having an assistant constantly around him would drive him mad.

But the woman seemed pleasant and likeable, and the more questions she answered the more impressed he felt. She was competent and confident, didn't patronise him, and made no assumptions about his level of ability. He could tell that Waverly was favourably impressed from very early on in the interview, and he thought it was almost a certainty that she would get the job.

When the interview was over she asked him, 'You have a cafeteria here, don't you, Mr Kuryakin? Would it be a good idea to spend some time together in a less formal setting? I'd like to know you as a person.'

Illya dithered for a moment. Part of him wanted time alone to think, wanted to just get in a cab and go home. It would be odd to go down to the commissary as if he were still working here. But he agreed, and she said, 'I'm afraid you'll have to show me the way. I have no idea where anything is in this warren.'

Illya gave a small smile. Did he know the way? Of course he knew where the commissary was, but would he be able to find it?

'Well, we need to go to the elevator at any rate,' he said.

She didn't even offer to help him, and somehow that made him feel so much more confident. This was his territory, not hers. He took her to the elevator, he pressed the right floor button, he took her to the left when they exited the lift and looked out for the door into the commissary. As soon as it slid open he knew it was right. There was the scent of food and cleaning spray, the clatter of utensils, the low murmur of chatter that suddenly quietened as he stepped in through the door.

'It's as if I'm a walking miracle,' he murmured to his companion, and she laughed.

'There's a free table over by the wall,' she said. 'Now, will you get the coffee or shall I?'

'Oh.' For a moment Illya wasn't sure what to say. Then he thought of all the times he had gone to that café over the road from the rehabilitation school, and how he had got quite used to going up to the counter there, and said, 'I'll get the coffee. Black or white?'

'White, please,' she replied.

He knew where the counter was but he didn't know how he would carry the drinks. But Miss Williams said easily, 'I'll carry.'

'Oh, thank you,' he said.

He moved over to where he remembered the counter being, and the cane clattered into the hard upright just where he had expected it to be.

'Can I get a couple of coffees?' he asked in a raised voice, and there was the sound of something being set down, and then one of the servers saying, 'Mr Kuryakin! It's so good to – er – '

'To see me,' Illya finished for the man. He wasn't sure who it was but the voice was familiar. 'Two coffees, please,' he said again. 'One white and one black.'

'Sure. Just a moment,' the man replied, and Illya stood there listening to the hiss of the coffee machine, the opening of the fridge, the pouring of liquids. He opened his wallet and took out a dollar bill and handed it over when the man returned, murmuring, 'Thank you, Johnny.' He was sure now that it was Johnny. At least, he thought it was.

'I've got the tray,' Miss Williams said. 'The table is in the far corner by the wall. Would you rather take my arm?'

'Oh, yes,' he said, and he followed her across the room. 'Thank you,' he said as he sat, and he meant for more than just the coffee. The chatter around him was still muted. People were still watching him, he knew. Miss Williams was the only one in the room treating him like a normal person.

'Miss Williams, I think you're going to be an excellent assistant,' he said honestly, sipping at his black coffee.

'Does that mean I've got the job?' she asked with a soft laugh. 'If so, I'll be as good as I can be, Mr Kuryakin. A man in your position should have a secretary. I happen to be a secretary who has worked with the blind before. I hope we'll be a good match.'

'As long as Mr Waverly approves,' Illya nodded. 'I'm very happy with your credentials. I expect there'll be a few more security checks, but you've come this far already and it's unusual to turn up anything beyond this point. I'll have to come back to work gradually, I think. I'm still taking classes several days a week. But the sooner I can start doing some days, the better.'

'Ah, well then,' she replied in a satisfied tone. 'I look forward to working with you, Mr Kuryakin. May I call you Illya? I'd rather you call me Sarah.'

'Please do,' he murmured.

He felt strangely as if he were sitting on the edge of a cliff. He was excited by the idea of coming back to work, but sitting here with this woman made it all seem so real, and he wasn't sure how on earth he would manage it. He was doing so well in his adaptation, and he knew that, but this was such a huge step.

'I expect you'll ease into it, Illya,' Miss Williams said in a low voice, as if she had been reading his mind. 'I'm here to help you. We'll both get into the swing of things and find out exactly what our roles are.'

'Yes, I suppose we will,' Illya said, cupping his hands around his warm mug and imagining this being a regular thing again, being back at U.N.C.L.E., working in the office he knew so well, coming down to the commissary for coffee or lunch, going home in the evening and throwing off his shoes and thinking about the next day's work. It would be different, of course; that went without saying. There would be no more field missions, none of the thrill of holding a gun, travelling to distant countries, infiltrating buildings, almost getting caught. But it would be something. It would be a purpose to his life again. There was a shiver deep inside him at the thought of having that again.

'Maybe we should go up to the office when we've finished here and have a look at the equipment,' he said. 'Miss McNabb said a few things have arrived. I'd like to know what they are.'

'Well, I've always liked unwrapping parcels,' Miss Williams said, with a glee that made Illya smile. Unwrapping presents had lacked a certain amount of anticipation this Christmas, since he didn't see the presents beforehand and Napoleon had to tell him exactly what some of them were even after he'd unwrapped them. But he had to admit to his own excitement about what might be waiting for him in the office. The equipment would signify his journey back into life.

((O))

'Illya!'

The sight that greeted Napoleon when he opened the door of his office made his heart leap. He hadn't been sure if he would see Illya at Headquarters or not today, but he hadn't expected to open the office door and see Illya sitting behind his desk as he had seen him so often, head tilted down, intent on some kind of work. At Napoleon's exclamation Illya looked up, and a smile lit his face.

'Napoleon, are you back already?'

His eyes moved to a tall woman standing near the filing cabinets, rummaging through a box there.

'Yes, I – Er, would you like to introduce me to your friend?'

Illya seemed delighted at his unease, and he turned to the woman. 'Napoleon, this is Sarah Williams. I hope she'll be my assistant when I get back to work. Sarah, this is Napoleon Solo, my – er – Well, he's always been my partner.'

'He's still his partner,' Napoleon said firmly, coming across the room to clap a hand onto Illya's shoulder.

The woman's dark eyes followed his movements, watching him with a shrewdness he was more used to in agents than secretaries. If he were honest with himself, he wished that she weren't here. He wanted to do things with Illya that were more intimate than polite pleasantries.

'I'm pleased to meet you, Miss Williams,' he said, smoothly masking over his slight discomfort, and she took his extended hand and said, 'Likewise.'

Despite his discomfort he thought he liked her. She was pleasant to look at, but she also looked like a practical, sensible woman, who wouldn't drive Illya mad by fawning over him or distracting him with unnecessary things.

'So – what's this, Illya?' he asked, touching the small machine on Illya's desk which he'd been bent over when Napoleon arrived. He tapped his fingernail on it. 'I mean this blue chunk of metal on your desk?'

Illya reached out to touch the object, which was made of blue painted metal and looked a little like a typewriter, except it only had seven main keys.

'This? It's a brailler. I forgot you haven't seen one, have you? I've been learning on ones just like it at the school. It's so I can type in braille.'

'Oh, well, that's – ' He wasn't sure what to say. He looked between Illya and the woman. It was wonderful, but it was also strange to be reminded of this other life that Illya led whenever he was at the school. 'You'll have to show me how you use it,' he said.

'If we're working in the office together again you'll have plenty of opportunity to see me use it,' Illya said prosaically. 'I really should get my own to keep at home. I need as much practice as I can get. Sarah has been helping me go through the things that Waverly had ordered in for me, and we've been discussing filing systems. We think I'll be able to keep track of everything with a tight system that we all keep to. That – er – probably means we'll have to have rigidly separated filing cabinets, Napoleon,' he said rather awkwardly.

'Oh, because I'm a slob, you mean?' Napoleon asked archly. 'You do know I'm not the one who files his luncheon sandwiches in E to H, don't you?'

Illya snorted. 'I wouldn't have to if U.N.C.L.E. employees weren't the most persistent thieves on the block. Anyway,' he said then, turning a solid cover over the brailler and getting to his feet. 'Sarah, I'm sure I've kept you long enough. I'm almost certain you have the job. I expect you'll have confirmation in the next few days.'

'I look forward to working with you, Illya,' she said warmly, then as Illya reached for his cane she said, 'No, don't worry about seeing me out. I have a good memory for directions. I'll find my way to the exit. You stay here and show your new things to your partner.'

She was shrewd. Just reading the look in her eyes told Napoleon that. She was a shrewd, intelligent woman, and he didn't know if she understood the depth of what was between him and Illya, but he was sure she understood they wanted time without a stranger in the room.

'I've missed you,' Napoleon said as soon as she had closed the door behind her, coming to face Illya and lightly stroking his fingers down his lapel.

'Is she gone?' Illya asked.

'Of course she is.' Napoleon slipped over to the door and locked it, then returned to resume his light stroking of Illya's lapel, his shoulder, his cheek and the soft hair at his temple. 'Illya, you don't know how good it is to see you back in this office.'

'Oh, I think I have an idea,' Illya said with feeling. 'I don't know if you know how good it is to be back here. I have missed this so much.'

'And even though you can't see – '

Illya shook his head. 'It doesn't matter. It's all different. I know that. But it doesn't matter, Napoleon. I'm back home, and there are worse things in life than blindness.'

Napoleon cupped his hand on Illya's cheek, letting his palm very gently stroke across his skin.

'Don't pity me, Napoleon,' Illya said gently.

'No, I'm not, I'm not,' Napoleon said quickly, but he wondered if perhaps in a way he was. This felt curiously like a giving up, like a giving in to the blindness. But he knew his feeling was ridiculous. Illya could either live with this or he could spend his life in bitterness and regret. He could easily choose to be happy, and to do that he needed to accept what he couldn't change, and move on. He wondered if perhaps it was harder for him to accept than it was for Illya.

'I don't pity you,' he said more firmly. 'I love you.'

Illya leaned in to kiss Napoleon softly on the lips.

'I know you do,' he said. 'You know I do you.'

Napoleon smiled. 'You think you can bring yourself to say it?'

A little pink entered Illya's cheeks. He did say it, but sometimes he seemed so awkward saying it, especially in a direct echo of Napoleon.

'Is it something that has to be said out loud, Napoleon? It sounds so trite. _I love you. I love you too_. Those phrases should be decorated with roses and pink ribbons and emblazoned on cards.'

Napoleon felt a little spike of disappointment at that, but he didn't show it. He knew that Illya wasn't the type to enjoy roses and pink ribbons, but sometimes it would be nice.

'Well, I quite like roses,' he shrugged, and Illya smiled.

'I don't say the words as often as you do, but it doesn't mean I don't feel them,' he said sincerely. 'Я люблю тебя,' he said, and he touched his lips to Napoleon's cheek. 'Will that do?'

'Perfectly,' Napoleon replied, thrilling a little at the rich sounds of Illya's native language. He stepped back a little from Illya then and looked around the office. 'This Miss Williams,' he said, running his eyes over the objects on his own desk, over the drawers and filing cabinets. 'She hasn't passed all the checks yet?'

'She's passed enough,' Illya said quickly, putting a hand out to find his desk again and running his fingers lightly over the cover of the brailler. 'She's no risk.'

Napoleon pursed his lips, holding back the lingering little anxiety that this woman hadn't been completely cleared, but that she had been in the office of U.N.C.L.E.'s top agents with a chaperone who couldn't see.

'Are you – ' he began.

' _Napoleon_ ,' Illya said impatiently. 'We're going to be working in the same office again. You're going to have to start trusting me to do my job.'

He could see the closed in expression on Illya's face. These were the moments when he looked most Russian. It made something flip over in his stomach to remember the depth of Illya's foreignness. It was so easy, sometimes, to forget that he was from another culture entirely.

'All right,' he said, holding up his hands. He wondered when he had stopped trusting Illya's judgement implicitly. Did Illya being blind really make him look at him so differently? He mentally slapped himself, and took in a deep breath. 'Look, I'm sorry, Illya,' he said. 'I've got a lot of adjusting to do too.'

Illya's lips became a little thinner for a moment. 'Adjusting like reminding yourself that I'm still a man, that I'm still professional, that I can still bring judgement to bear on a situation and make decisions and come to my own conclusions?'

Napoleon sighed. 'Yes,' he said honestly. 'Yes, adjusting like that.'

'Well, adjust,' Illya said in an uncompromising tone. He walked around his desk and got his cane from where it was leaning against one of the filing cabinets. He ran his fingers down the length, unscrewed the tip from the end and dropped it into the rubbish bin, then took a new tip out of his shoulder bag on the desk and screwed it on. 'I could feel it failing on the way in this afternoon,' he told Napoleon. 'I've been doing so much walking recently. Now, I'm going to go down to the bathroom and wash my hands, because I don't know where that tip might have been, and then, if you're free, we're going out for a late lunch.'

Napoleon grinned. It felt good, very good, to be in the presence of a decisive and confident Illya again.

'I'm free,' he said. 'I've debriefed with Waverly and I'll type up the reports in the morning. Where are we going for lunch?'


	20. Chapter 20

_It has been nine months since I lost my sight. Nine months. A woman could have a baby in that time. Perhaps this is like falling unexpectedly pregnant. The surprise, the adjustment, the learning to cope. Perhaps nine months represents the beginning of a new life._

 _What a silly idea. There's not really any difference between yesterday and today. I haven't started on a new life. I must be careful not to be too poetic. I'm no Masefield._

 _Napoleon has been on seventeen missions out of the country since I went blind. He's come back with broken bones once, gunshot wounds twice, and with suspected concussion two times. He should have a partner, but he won't choose a new partner. He says he prefers working alone._

 _Right now he's – Where is he right now? I think he's in Cuba. He calls when he can but I can't rely on him calling. He isn't obliged to keep calling home. He feels a duty to, like any husband. Even though we're both men, and I in no way take the part of a wife, Napoleon likes to be a husband. He feels guilty about leaving me behind, even though he knows I can look after myself perfectly well._

 _It's very strange, this relationship we've fallen into. I never imagined it happening. I never imagined any serious relationship, much less one with Napoleon. If I imagined it I imagined a doll-like wife, two children, something of which mama and tato would approve. They wouldn't approve of this. I've flitted back and forth between women all my life and never found anything worth staying for. I've looked at men and wondered and then been disgusted at myself. But then this happened. Fate, I suppose. Life happens, with its ups and downs. Going blind. Finding Napoleon. These things aren't black and white. Sometimes Napoleon irritates the hell out of me. He always has. Sometimes being blind feels like a blessing. I'm not supposed to say that, but it does. Sometimes it feels as though it's a blessing that lets me concentrate on the important things. Sight is such a distraction. There's so much that you don't need to see._

 _Like now. Here I am sitting in the window with my brailler and a sheet of paper wound in, practising, because the more I practice the better I will get. When I look back over the accounts I've written in the last few months I can see how much better I'm getting at typing, and I can see how much better I'm getting in my adjustment to this life. I have put Bach on the record player, and the summer sun is so warm on my face I feel like I'm melting. I know what I might see out there. I know I'd see people walking in the street, and the cars I can hear purring by. I know I'd look up and watch the clouds drifting by, and I'd be looking at that one cloud in the sky, waiting for it to cover the sun. Instead of writing I'd be doing that. I know when a cloud goes in front of the sun because the heat suddenly fades a little and sometimes the light dims. But I don't wait for it and anticipate it and get annoyed at all the little clouds waiting in the wings. They just come, and they go, and it's warm again. So I carry on typing, practising my braille, writing this – I suppose it's a diary. Just writing down the thoughts that come into my head so that my finger strikes become smoother and faster, and remembering the grade b contractions becomes easier, and – ha – remembering to put in the damn capital signs and number signs so I write Grade 2 not grade b. Stupid._

 _But it's all right. One is not supposed to decide that blindness is all right. One is supposed to rail against it, to rend cloth and gnash teeth. People keep telling me how hard it must be, how awful I must find it, how I must be desperate for a way to fix my eyes. I'm tired of trying to find a way to fix my eyes. Three doctors have told me there's no chance of that. I'm tired of rending cloth and gnashing teeth. It doesn't get me anywhere. Blindness is all right. I can get just about anywhere I want to go on buses or in cabs. I can use the subway if I really have to. I can walk pretty much anywhere. The grid system is a blessing, and if I lose my bearings someone will set me straight. I'm independent and capable, and a side benefit of all the hours at the school is that I can cook better than I ever could in the past._

 _I do miss things. Of course I do. I miss driving. I wish I could drive still. I miss shooting a gun on the firing range. I wish people didn't treat me so strangely. I wish the girls at headquarters didn't speak to me in those over-gentle voices. I wish I could read my own post when I get it, and read books without having to hope they have them in the Braille library in ten volumes, and read journals so I can keep up with physics. I miss seeing sharp colours and not having to plan everything like a military expedition. I wish mama didn't cry every time I speak to her on the phone. I miss going on missions. Napoleon is in Cuba. He's been in Hong Kong, England, France, Brazil, Spitzbergen, Czechoslovakia, and I wish I could have been in those places too._

 _What I do now is a good job. It pays less than my agent's salary, but I have a monthly disability payment on top of that. I still get to read the details of all the missions, I get to plan infiltrations, assign agents, compile dossiers on enemy agents. It's interesting and it occupies me and I get on with Sarah, thank god. But I do miss international flights and infiltrations and explosions. I get jealous of Napoleon when he leaves on yet another mission. I do get jealous. But there isn't anything I can do about it._

 _And it's all right. I don't get injured any more. I don't get captured any more. I haven't escaped death by a hair's breadth since I was in Stockholm, and I really don't miss almost dying. I might live past forty this way. I don't miss the indignities and the exhaustion and the feeling sometimes that we're fighting a rising tide. I have friends from the school who don't treat me strangely, because we're all blind, and they're good, interesting people with interesting lives. The people who matter at Uncle are so much more normal with me now. I get more chances to go to the jazz clubs and play music there than I ever used to, and I'm exploring new avenues of life that weren't possible when I was always on another plane, going to another place._

 _So it's all right. I miss sight, but I live with blindness. Sometimes it's an inconvenience, but those of us without wings don't notice the inconvenience of not being able to fly. Most of the things I miss are things I don't need. It used to be that every time I realised that sight doesn't matter I'd fight and struggle against that feeling, but then I discovered that if I let go I don't fall to my death. I just carry on. How do I explain that? I discovered that letting go of sight is all right. It's better. It's not like jumping off a cliff. It's more like letting go of the shore and finally discovering you can swim in the sea. I don't drown. I swim._

 _I'm not a saint and I'm not an angel, no matter how much people want to apply those labels to me. Blind people aren't holy martyrs. We're just people. People who don't see so well. It would be silly to pretend I never get down, that I'm never frustrated, that I don't have bad days. Very silly to pretend that here, in these notes that only I will ever read. I do get down. I get terrible with poor Napoleon sometimes. He puts up with so much. I scream at him and I rage at him and sometimes he takes it and sometimes he rages back, but it always ends in closeness and comfort. And I get over it. I remember that I can't change anything, and that it's all right, being blind. I remember that almost all of my problems are because the world isn't adjusted for me, or that someone's being stupid, refusing to accommodate someone whose eyes don't work, or underestimating me, or patronising me. I remember that on my own I'm capable. I'm okay._

Illya rolled the last sheet out of the brailler and put it on top of the others, shuffled them into neatness against the palms of his hands, and put them carefully into the locked box where he kept this record. He turned the key, but he didn't take it out of the lock. He trusted Napoleon to not open the box, and even if he did he thought he would give up quite quickly at trying to read the braille sheets. He put the box back in its place under his desk and put the cover over the brailler. The last track on the record he was listening to trailed off and turned to hiss and static, and he went to flip the disc to the other side. He remembered briefly that glossy, fluctuating sight of light on black record grooves, and smiled. Then he set the record player going again and sighed as the rich sounds of Bach's Third Cello Suite began to fill the air. He put his fingertips on the speaker to let the vibrations move up through his arms and encompass him. There was something so intensely beautiful about the pure and penetrating resonance of those string sounds filling the air. Sometimes it was hard to move about the room because he became so lost in the sounds that he forgot to take notice of his surroundings. He just stood, transfixed, and forgot where he was.

Perhaps he would try to replicate something of that on his English horn later. Or perhaps he would listen to some jazz and play along with that on the beautiful piano that sat on the other side of the room. It had been so good of Napoleon to buy him that piano. He really wished he had the time to learn musical braille...

He could hardly wait for Napoleon's return from Cuba, because they both had two weeks leave that Waverly had promised wouldn't be interrupted with that inevitable beep of the communicator. Illya had booked almost all of that time at a cottage on the beach with its own pool. It would be his first time away from the apartment since Stockholm. He hadn't been swimming since Stockholm either, and he was looking forward to trying that in a small, private pool. He was looking forward to the drive up there in a soft-top car in the summer sun. He was looking forward to discovering what restaurants there were in the little town a few miles from the house, to exploring the beach and forest walks that were to be had in the area, to trying out the cane tips he had bought for rough terrain. He was looking forward to so many things, and to Napoleon coming home so that they could share them together.


End file.
